


Demons

by futureplans



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Eventual Smut, F/F, some death and violence, yknow for spice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futureplans/pseuds/futureplans
Summary: Eve expected that finding out she had magical powers would be more exciting. But three years down the line, she's failing at apprentice level, she's pretty sure her mentor hates her, and the only thing that brings her joy is the collection of magical books she shouldn't even be amassing.That's when a chance discovery presents Eve with an unexpected possibility: to summon an ancient and powerful demon who actually knows some real magic. And, well, things just snowball from there.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 123
Kudos: 192





	1. Nature hates me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve gives in to her impulses.

The rain patters steadily against the roof, and the walls, and the windows, creating a blanket of white noise that helps Eve tune out everything but the lines she is reading. She lets her eyes drift over words she’s reviewed so many times they’re almost engraved in her memory, silently willing them to finally group together into something that _makes sense_.

She’d like to think she was almost getting somewhere when the phone rings and bursts her bubble of concentration.

She probably wasn’t.

“Bill,” she calls out as soon as she’s accepted the video call, which she does without a glance at the screen. Maybe if she studies this cryptic diagram for another minute, the epiphany will finally arrive. “What’s up?”

Bill just laughs, a sound halfway between disbelief and resignation. Oh, no. She lets her head fall on her arms at the realization.

“It’s already 7?” she asks regardless, like maybe she’ll turn to the phone and won’t see her best friend holding a glass of cheap wine and judging her life decisions.

“Ten past. I was waiting for you to ring, seeing as you tend to get distracted. Then I began to suspect you might have gotten _really_ distracted.”

“ _Really_ doesn’t begin to cover it,” she admits in a mumble.

“Eve,” Bill drawls out, playfully scandalized, “have you forgotten to do your evening meditation?”

“I’ve forgotten all of them. And I have had _no_ centering thoughts today. I didn’t even water the plants.”

“It’s been raining all day.”

“Oh, right. Goodie,” she sighs out half-heartedly.

“I don’t know who is luckiest that you live in rainy England, you or the poor plants that have been placed in your care.”

She should probably feel worse about her poor performance in all this. After all, she’s doing it for herself. The living in the middle of the woods – actually, it’s a ten-minute ride from the nearest town, it just _feels_ like there’s nothing around but trees and bugs and crushing solitude -, the meditation and centering, the connection with nature. The _attempt_ at connection with nature.

“Nature hates me.”

“Nature doesn’t hate anything,” Bill points out patiently.

“I know, it says so on the meditation package,” Eve replies, not patiently at all. She groans. “Okay, enough about my personal failings, how was your day?”

“My day was fine,” he says diplomatically. He pauses to take a sip of his wine. “Do you want to deconstruct this ‘personal failings’ line of thought?”

Acknowledging our short-comings should come as the first step to bettering ourselves. Dwelling on them for any other reason simply builds up guilt and feeds the cycle of negativity.

Eve has heard it before. Many times. But apparently, the world can pry wallowing from her brain’s cold, dead hands.

Metaphorical hands.

“No.”

“Then do you want to tell me what you were doing all day?”

She lifts up the book so that it’s in Bill’s line of sight. He squints at it.

“Which one is it?”

“ _Mind reading for dummies.”_ Or, you know, the Ye Olde English version of that. It’s a translation anyway, so her title is as valid as theirs.

“Haven’t you read that ten times over?”

“I thought it might stick this time.”

“The definition of insanity comes to mind,” Bill jokes.

“I thought doing the same thing over and over was very zen.”

“Not if you’re trying to get something out of it. Especially if that something is mastery of a field of magic that hasn’t been used in centuries.”

She stretches in her chair. If she isn’t going to read, then she might as well leave the library, or what passes for it in her small house. A tiny space filled with shelf upon shelf of ancient tomes, so many that some have gathered in piles on the floor, leaving just enough room for a desk by the window.

She could bring her books out to the large room that makes up the rest of the house, with its tall glass wall overseeing the garden, the comfortable sofa that points at nothing in particular, given the absence of a TV. Bring them upstairs to the little mezzanine over the kitchen that passes for a bedroom, read curled up in bed.

But most of the time, the cramped library ends up being the only place where she can focus, where she feels like she belongs. Everything else is too open and green and… zen-inducing. Not that it does induce zen, in her at least. Maybe it does in Carolyn.

“It’s not just about casting the spells,” she explains with a sigh. Bill already knows, he’s heard it before, but maybe it’s for her own benefit. To remind herself that she isn’t actually insane. “I want to understand what it was like, back when… I don’t know, when people did magic I maybe wouldn’t have sucked at.”

“You don’t suck at…” Bill can’t even finish the sentence. She’s doomed. “You just have to get out of your head. Breathe.”

She does so much breathing. She is never not breathing. She might be the worst nature witch in the world, but she has definitely mastered breathing.

It did not help.

“I have to get out of this place,” she counters with a grimace. She gets up and walks out of the library. She should make something for dinner.

“Oh, yes, the horror of living alone in a house with a lovely view and no unnecessary distractions.”

“I _need_ unnecessary distractions.”

“By their very nature-”

“Yes, I get it, but maybe my definition of unnecessary and Carolyn’s are very different. Sometimes I need TV to reset my brain.”

“To procrastinate, you mean?”

“Anything can be used to procrastinate.” She opens the fridge, pulls out the first microwaveable thing she finds. Lasagne. Fine.

“Yes, I think we established that with your tenth reread of _Mind reading for dummies_.”

She leans against the counter, listening to the hum of the microwave. Right ahead is her full, unimpeded view of the forest that surrounds her house. Nothing but nature, wherever she looks.

Taunting her.

“What is it like, actually being good at magic instead of being stuck as a 40-year-old Padawan?”

Bill chuckles. He’s about to be a dick.

“The rewards are mostly internal. I’m very at peace with the world around me.”

She rolls her eyes, but first she turns to face her phone, so he’ll see it.

“Dick. Tell me about cool spells.”

“Yesterday I communed with my petunias to find out what species of bug was getting at them.”

“Lovely,” she sighs out. She lets her head fall back, body slumping with all the force of years of frustration, impatience that only coils tighter and tighter around her as she tries to fight it. “I was born in the wrong century.”

“Oh, cheer up, maybe you wouldn’t have been good at the ‘cool’ magic either.”

“Again, _dick_.”

“Eve, Carolyn recruited you. That must mean she saw something in you. You have to trust the process.”

“Maybe she saw someone she’d have lots of fun torturing.”

“Definitely not that, you annoy her too much for her to be having fun.”

“Speaking of…” She trails off, lets the ding of the microwave save her from actually having to say it.

“Speaking of you annoying Carolyn?”

Without bothering to plate up her dinner, she simply pulls out a fork and starts picking at it.

“Yes, exactly, do you think she’d hate me if-”

“Yes. So don’t.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be very zen of her. Even if I _am_ her most terrible and misbehaved student.”

“Once you’ve reached a certain level of enlightenment, you learn to multitask. Be petty _and_ in perfect inner balance.”

“Halfway there,” she jokes in a sing-song. Bill chuckles.

“Don’t go to London.”

“I need books.”

“Strictly speaking, if you’re just going to reread them all, then you’ll never _need_ new ones.”

“There’s a super elite auction going on next weekend, only a handful of people. Carolyn can get me in and maybe I’ll finally find volume 2 of that-”

“She’ll give you the speech. The London speech.”

“If she hates it so much, why does she always let me go?”

“Because she knows you’ll leave for good if you can’t have your books?”

She stops her bantering and shoves a couple more forkfuls of steaming lasagne into her mouth. That’s one she still doesn’t get. Why does Carolyn even bother keeping her around? Eve has been with the group for years, has made barely any progress in that time, actively rebels against all of Carolyn’s instructions, essentially contributes nothing to the group. Or to the world.

And yet Carolyn not only lets her stick around, but actively tries to make sure she doesn’t leave. Is it professional pride, shame of admitting failure? Fear that, left to her own devices, Eve will succumb to the dark side?

Is there even a dark side to nature magic? Make birds crap on people’s heads all the time? Convince trees to grow in inconvenient directions?

“Come with me,” she says, instead of voicing any of her worries. A little part of her fears that if she shares them with anyone, they’ll immediately realize that she makes an excellent point and cut her loose.

“So Carolyn can be mad at me as well?”

“Well, you’re very at peace with the world around you, so I’m sure you’ll work through it.”

“Fine.” She pumps her fist in the air. The perfect buffer. Plus she gets to see Bill in person, which is always nice. “But only because I want to see how outwardly annoyed she gets.”

“Pursed lips?”

“A given,” Bill ripostes. “I’m going for the flared nostrils.”

“God, I hope not. She’ll make the tube mice chase me around again.”

“I told you before, that was a coincidence.”

“Was it, Bill? Was it?”

(…)

Carolyn’s London home is elegant and modern and Eve hates her. The two statements are as much connected by cause and effect as they are independent.

Okay, she doesn’t hate Carolyn. Not really. She just wishes she wasn’t quite so… calmly disapproving. So passive that it’s hard to tell whether she’s passive-aggressive or simply longing to have Eve out of her sight.

Eve and Bill sit side by side on the living room sofa, while Carolyn finishes up whatever she’s doing in her office. Through the large double window, they can see Kenny milling around the little greenhouse.

“Carolyn thinks she’s so great just because she has a demon,” Eve mumbles with crossed arms. Kenny catches her looking his way and gives an awkward wave.

“She _is_ so great and that is why she has a demon,” Bill points out. His voice in person is always so different, like his quiet self-assuredness just doesn’t carry across Wi-Fi. From a distance, it always feels like maybe next time they meet he’ll be sad and frustrated just like her and they can go get drunk somewhere to drown their sorrows.

“Well, it’s not that impressive.”

“Eve, you are obsessed with demons.”

“Yeah, the cool ones, not... Kenny the flower boy.”

“So if Kenny showed up at your doorstep tomorrow offering to live with you, you wouldn’t be thrilled?”

Eve watches the demon gently caress the petals of a fading pink flower. She keeps thinking of him as a boy, which is weird, because he’s also older than all of them combined. But he acts so much like an awkward kid, it’s hard to shake off the impression.

“Would he water my plants?”

“Watering your plants isn’t a chore, it’s a chance to connect with them.”

She slumps a little down the sofa. “Anything can be a chore if you don’t want to do it.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bill cheers on, making her snort. “What’s wrong with the flower boy, then?”

“He’s a lesser demon,” she immediately begins reciting, “he’s attuned to _nature_ magic, when it could be literally anything else, like a cool new-”

“If it were anything else, he wouldn’t have been drawn to Carolyn,” Bill interrupts to point out, and yes, of course, but the point of the thing still stands. They could have a shape shifter, or a mind reader, or a fire starter, and instead they have a glorified gardener.

“Wouldn’t be a problem if he was bound.”

“Is that what it’s going to take for Carolyn to impress you? She has to _bind a demon_?”

“Too demanding?”

“Oh no, perfectly reasonable. Maybe after she’s done with that, she can solve world hunger.”

“The knowledge must exist somewhere,” Eve says sullenly. “Something like that wouldn’t just be oral tradition.”

“Maybe they burned all the books about it because bringing demons into contact with the human world until they are too used to it to ever want to leave is a bad and dangerous idea.”

“The world used to be magical, Bill.” She gazes up at the ceiling, voicing the thoughts that are always swirling around her head. Just another rephrasing of _I was born in the wrong century_. “Now it all feels like such a struggle. Entire fields of knowledge just… gone.”

A knock on the glass cuts off whatever Bill was going to say. Kenny nods at the stairs with a tight smile, then looks away shyly. ‘Flower boy’ is a bit harsh. He’s a nice kid. He deserves someone a little warmer than Carolyn.

“Eve,” is the first thing Carolyn says upon their arrival at her office. She gives a last glance at a pile of papers, then removes her glasses to look up at the pair. “And Bill.”

“Hello, Carolyn,” Bill replies pleasantly. Carolyn nods, expression perfectly neutral, then turns her attention fully to Eve.

“What are you doing back in London so soon?” she asks, like it’s a casual inquiry and not a veiled criticism.

“There’s an auction.”

“I see.” She pauses, carefully folds her glasses closed and settles them neatly at the centre of her desk. “Another one.”

“Yep,” Eve says eloquently, popping out the p. “Another one.”

Bill stands silently, observing the exchange, and Eve just knows he’s eagerly awaiting Carolyn’s little tell-tale signs of disappointment. Someone like Carolyn doesn’t get angry, or raise her voice, or chastise. She just does that little looking-straight-at-you thing where you feel like you’ve kicked her grandchildren down a flight of stairs, or she raises an eyebrow with all the impact of a slap to the face. Flared nostrils are reserved for something truly horrible, like that time Eve fell asleep in her garden and her reading glasses almost started a small forest fire.

“Well, I have told you enough times why you should avoid the city.” She’s not going to give the London speech? Eve suddenly wishes she was as understated as Carolyn, because the urge to pump her fist is overwhelming. “But I will remind you once more.”

Eve swears Bill is silently snickering.

“The first step to an understanding of magic is the clearing of the mind. It is a difficult stage, that some may go through in weeks but could take years for others. At this crucial time, any and all external distractions threaten to undo all the progress you’ve made. A place like London is composed almost entirely of distractions, and what’s more, its connection to nature is too tenuous for the uninitiated.”

Yes, yes, London is the worst. Shopping is the worst, people are the worst, the tube is the worst, loud music is the worst, everything but quiet meditative forests is the worst.

“You should also avoid London for the simple reason that, as long as you carry on giving in to your impulses, you will never master them.” With that, Carolyn’s fingers intertwine over the table and Eve fears, for a moment, that she will actually say no. “So tell me, Eve, why should I continue to enable this behaviour?”

Her first instinct is to throw some finger guns and a wink. It’s a terrible instinct. Why is she so bad under pressure? She resists the urge to slump in place as she recites the answer she knows Carolyn is expecting.

“Because mindfulness can’t be forced and I have to choose it for myself?”

Carolyn blinks, unmoving. “Is that a question or a statement?”

“Statement.”

“Alright, then. So, do you still want to attend this auction?”

Now is the time where she says no, and goes back to her cabin in the woods and stays there alone and undistracted until she can make plants grow through sheer willpower and becomes so zen she could rival the Dalai Lama.

“...Yes.”

Carolyn sighs. The disappointment is palpable.

Eve used to be better at this. Maybe that’s why it’s all so frustrating now, that she keeps messing up, making Carolyn _sigh_ , like she’s just suggested invading Russia in the dead of winter.

She never used to disappoint authority figures. She dazzled her teachers, impressed parents, all her bosses _loved_ her. She always knew just what to say to get them on her side, to show off her potential. Even when things looked dire, she could spin anything into a positive light. At any given point, at least five different companies were trying to poach her, the best sales rep in the East coast.

Now she kills cacti, she has exactly one friend and the only thing close to a boss in her life probably has more faith in her own pinscher reaching enlightenment than Eve.

Is that really all it takes? Three years in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the occasional voice call to save her from complete solitude, and suddenly big crowds are surging, jostling things, instead of an everyday occurrence. Suddenly she’ll get so stuck in her own thoughts that everything feels like an obstacle. Suddenly she doesn’t know how to socialize any more.

Not socialize, a dozen different voices pop up to remind her. All the ones that have said it before, all the friends and lovers that have come to the same conclusion.

Manipulate.

A useful skill to have in the professional sphere, but not so much in the personal one. How many friends has she gained and lost? How many boyfriends and girlfriends? Even Niko, the man she almost married until he balked. Dating her felt like giving up all of himself, and after a while that stopped feeling so romantic.

She never meant to do it. It was just so easy, right in front of her. Everybody’s weak points, soft spots, dangling, tempting her to prod at them. She’s too good at reading people and too bad at resisting temptation.

 _Used_ to be good at reading people. Now she’s a hermit, and she still can’t resist temptation, so she’s not sure whether she’s better off or worse.

She hopes it’s better. It must be better, because she definitely wasn’t happy before. At the height of her career, with a handful of work acquaintances to pass for friends and a sterile love life, she met Carolyn at a UK conference and was given the offer of a lifetime. She didn’t even hesitate. On one hand of the scale, almost 40 years of disappointing people and working a job she was great at but definitely didn’t love. On the other, magic. Literal magic. A whole world to explore.

She was terrible at it. Still is, but at the beginning it was an unpleasant surprise. She stayed with Carolyn at first but it was quickly decided that she needed a more secluded atmosphere to make any progress, and off she was to her one-person cloister. She would have given up right then and there, but by then she’d already found the one thing she actually loved.

And it’s books. Like she’s back to her teen years, she finds escapism in volume after volume of magical adventures and descriptions of a wondrous world just beyond her reach. The fairy tales gain new life just from knowing that they were once real. She’ll endure years more of this if she at least gets the books.

So that’s why she said yes, why she’ll always be the disappointment. In a way, she’s already given up on nature magic, on all the things Carolyn is trying to teach her. She’s just in it for the library.

Oh, wow, would you look at that. Maybe she does still have some of that manipulation in her.

“Very well. You will receive the location and instructions by e-mail.” Carolyn’s yielding comes, as always, with the weight of a punishment rather than a reward. “And, Eve, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you…”

“No talking to Peel, yes, I got it.”

Carolyn is already picking up her glasses, which is a clear indication that the meeting is over.

“Exceedingly strange man,” she remarks to herself. “Forces his sister to keep a Capri Sun in her bag for him.” Looking up, she catches their eyes on her and seems to remember their presence. “Low blood sugar,” she elaborates, then returns to her papers. They’ve been dismissed.

(…)

The trip back out of London isn’t usually dreary. Eve is too excited to dig into her new purchases to dwell on the boredom that will creep up in a few days.

This time around, it isn’t any different. If anything, she’s even more hyper than usual. She snagged some amazing books that will make perfect additions to her library, and Peel wasn’t even at the auction to be his usual creepy self. He just sent over some representative that totally dropped the ball and let Eve sweep _Secrets of the Eastern European sects_ right out from under his nose. That guy is getting _fired_.

Peel must have been really busy to send someone else. These auctions always seem to improve his mood, enough that he almost looks human. The rich white guy version of human.

It’s a weird interest to have, for someone who isn’t even magical. Eve supposes all rich people end up as collectors of one thing or the other, but to pick old books full of information you’ll never be able understand or use seems a bit… Okay, criticizing that might be more hypocritical than she’s ready to be yet.

It’s still weird. Solitary tech mogul Aaron Peel, who steals away all the good books with his infinite funds and keeps trying to make contact with Carolyn or any of her followers that cross paths with him. Mostly Eve, since the rest are good boys and girls who follow the rules and stick to their isolated homes in the woods.

She almost had lunch with him a couple of times. It would probably be at _such_ a fancy place, too, with expensive wine. But the creep factor helps her resist the temptation. And it’s not like she’d provide much information, anyway, seeing as how she can barely do any magic.

As soon as her car is safely parked, all thoughts of Peel leave her mind because she has better things to think about. It’s late and she should probably go to sleep, leave the reading for tomorrow, but she won’t. She can’t. She finally found the second volume of the history of She Who Carries the Sun, arguably the most powerful witch to walk this Earth, and her hands almost shake as she fiddles with her keys and tries to get her haul inside the house.

She Who Carries the Sun – Sunny, as Eve affectionately calls her – is her _idol_. She is the baddest bitch Eve has ever read about. She unified so many realms under her rule, at one point her kingdom rivalled the Roman Empire. She could do _anything_. Every magical history book references her in one way or another, but apparently knowledge of the woman was so generalized at the time they were written that they all assumed their readers were perfectly aware of everything she did and achieved.

Which is why Eve has been dying to get her hands on an actual biography, or anything resembling it, and piece together all the hints she has been gathering.

Did Sunny really live for over a century? Did she make a home at the top of an inaccessible mountain? Did she stop an entire army with nothing but a powerful speech? Did she _fly_?

God, Eve would give up a limb to be able to fly.

She had a bound demon, Eve just knows it. There are fleeting mentions of it, but the literature is always so skittish around the topic of demons. The general reasoning is that they are necessary evils that we all know must be there, but well-bred people will politely ignore them, like sex in Victorian novels. Eve suspects some of it is just professional pride and a refusal to share credit.

But Sunny definitely had a demon, and it was definitely a greater one, adept at all fields of magic, unlike Kenny and his lot. They were such a powerful pair, unmatched, and surely a book dedicated entirely to the woman won’t be able to skip over _that_.

She can’t get through the entire book in one night, or at least she shouldn’t. She could start at the beginning, sure, but she could also maybe… skim for the demon references? If she’s lucky, there will be a whole chapter on it. The thought makes her fingers shake a little as she pulls the book free of its thick protective wrappings, sitting at her cluttered desk in her cluttered office.

 _Demons, demons, demons_ , she repeats in her head as she scans page after page. She almost gets distracted a few times, like when she finds a description of the spell Sunny used to read memories stored in emotional objects, which she knows she won’t be able to understand, but just the thrill of reading through the incomprehensible process is always enough to leave her bursting with jittery energy.

 _Demons, demons, demons_ , and she skips over what is possibly the juiciest retelling of Sunny’s diplomatic voyage to Greece. She’ll get back to that, just as soon as she-

She sucks in a breath. She almost rips the page as she finds a brand-new chapter, and it’s all she could ever hope for. _On the Enlightened One’s Finding and Binding of a Most Powerful Demon_.

‘Enlightened One’ is, of course, the snotty late mistranslation of Sunny’s actual epithet, when some 18th century Frenchmen liberally decided that the Sun was metaphorical and actually meant light as wisdom. A total bastardization of-

She needs to focus. Demons, right here in front of her. Not the time for etymological nit-picking.

She can barely read the individual words as they all blur together into a general impression of the contents of the chapter. Sunny kept a score of apprentices, one after the other, but none of them satisfied her. One day, she sent them all away, hid herself in her chambers for days, and emerged with a demon.

Looks like she was hoping for a more natural alliance, but as usual with mages, she eventually realized that nothing matches the power of a demon. Not to mention the obedience.

The book goes on to make the usual reassurances: the word ‘demon’ brings to mind the hordes of hell and little pitchforked, horned-tailed creatures, but it actually refers to any being of magic, typically resident in parallel realms, that can be summoned by a sufficiently powerful mage. These beings are uninterested in human affairs but can accept to be bound by a human whose power or ideals they respect, and will then lend them their magic and, in the process, typically develop a strong platonic relationship with the mage.

Eve scoffs at that last bit. Platonic, her ass. She’s read between the lines enough to know that many bound pairs ended up much closer than that, not to mention how it’s beyond clear that Kenny was hopelessly in love with his last bound witch. Poor Kenny.

As befitted Sunny, her demon was wondrously powerful and intelligent, impressing everyone who met it. Together, they could do whatever they wanted with the world and its people, bow everyone to their will. A few more paragraphs of adulation of the great Enlightened One, which Eve will go back to later.

Like most demons, this one had a preferred form. A young woman, blonde. Beautiful, always elegantly dressed according to the latest fashion, as polished as a marble statue when in repose, but curiously spry and unpredictable when animated. Sounds like a handful. It forms a strange contrast to Sunny’s typical image, to picture her dragging around a curious child with a penchant for trouble. Eve laughs at the thought.

There isn’t much more to the chapter but a few stories of the demon’s intervention in Sunny’s affairs. Some episodes Eve has read about before, now evidencing the role of Sunny’s helper instead of giving the witch all the credit.

Then, right at the end, the crest of the demon. A complex mesh of lines and shapes that each contained magical and symbolic meaning, so that their combination forms a powerful medallion representing the demon in more than just the pictorial form. The full reading of the medallion would require a few more manuals, but a loose array of a few circles and dots near the top is pointed out in the book. These represent the name by which the demon chose to be called in the human world.

Eve follows the symbols, draws them out with the tip of her index finger, and wonders how they came together to form the word written neatly under them.

Villanelle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming back with another KE multichapter! Updates every saturday, with possible exceptions for life stuff happening. Will update tags with each chapter.
> 
> Come check me out on twitter @evesaxe ^^


	2. I thought it was cause and effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve makes Carolyn angry.

Eve doesn’t usually skip her meditations and exercises, despite the lack of enthusiasm. No matter how much she feels like she’s given up, there’s also the vague sentiment that taking Carolyn’s house and supplies and network of contacts and doing absolutely nothing in return is bad form. She does the bare minimum, sure, but she doesn’t dare slip below that, on any but the most distracted of days.

She’s made a sort of routine of it. In the morning, while the coffee is brewing, she sits motionless on the sofa and tries to clear her mind, using the smell as a focus. After lunch, she’ll sit out in the garden, under the little awning if it’s raining, to try to connect with the plants around her. If any animals drop by, she shifts her attention to them, because it seems easier to reach out to something with a brain. Around sunset, she’ll make her second attempt at meditation, until all the light is gone from the sky.

It’s all a bit of a failure. Most of her meditation thoughts are “is it almost over?” and the closest she’s gotten to a connection is the one time she jumped into a bird’s mind for a second. It was cool, but also immediately over once she jolted violently at the sudden sensation and sent the little thing flying off in a panic.

Maybe Carolyn is the one that’s insane. Eve is only doing this, day in and day out, because Carolyn sees no need to adjust her teaching plan. So, really, _she_ is the one who does the same thing and expects different results. Eve expects the exact same results, and gets them, and is miserable but apparently very sane for it.

Instead of peace of mind, she has biting frustration, aimed as much at herself as at the rest of the world. Instead of connection, she has fragmented and hopeless glimpses of a past that she endlessly longs for. Instead of centering thoughts, she has questions.

Late into the night, she looks at that crest, at Villanelle’s entire life artfully crammed into a little medallion. She follows each line like she has any idea what they mean.

“This one is for her youthful personality.” It’s an inverted y, with a few circles sticking out of it and making it look a little like a teasing face poking out its tongue.

“This represents a penchant for arson.” A series of concentric circles cutting into the shortest side of an isosceles triangle. A torch, maybe, if she squints? Did Villanelle even have a penchant for arson?

It’s a little like drawing new constellations in the sky, or twisting the shapeless clouds into a form that reminds her of anything. An exercise in pointlessness and absolutely lacking in any kind of accuracy, but it’s also soothing. Just to picture her, the mystery, the most powerful demon in existence. Concentrated, summarized, a burst of knowledge hidden under lock and key.

And if Eve unfocuses her eyes and just looks at it… Kind of pretty, too. From just the right angle, a beach full of little shells and conches, from another a forest seen from above, stretching in every direction.

Little by little, her waking thoughts drift back to Villanelle. Her meditations turn to ten or twenty minutes of closed eyes and silently moving lips as she thinks, thinks, and wonders.

The world of Villanelle. The world in the time of Villanelle. The world bursting with magic, ripe for the taking, full of mages that would take you on as apprentice, a million different ways and techniques to learn a field of magic, a million fields to choose from, if the first didn’t suit you.

What would she do with a demon like Villanelle? Her breath stutters in her chest as she tries to imagine it. Someone around, someone who knows how it all works, someone she could just _ask_.

Answers. Villanelle would give her answers. And she realizes, looking up at the stars, breathing in the deep forest air mixed with the scent of red wine, that she has been dying for answers. More than just pictures in her mind, more than the endless books she collects, she wants answers. And someone to ask them of.

She drains her glass. She usually drinks with Bill, and he cuts her off after a couple of glasses, but tonight he was hopelessly tied up, doing whatever it is actual mages do once they’ve progressed past the baby stage, and so she drinks alone and is far past her usual limit.

Some things were here before, and are still here now, aren’t they? The stars and the sea and the rocks. The trees. Oh, if she could talk to trees, actually talk to them, not just feel the life of them and sit stiffly in place as the phantom sensation of sap courses through her limbs. If she could find their memories and read them, like Sunny could read them, on the bark of a tree or the lines of a book or the trails left across dusty surfaces.

She raises a hand and lets her fingers lightly brush against the nearest tree. Rough, uneven bark, a little softened by the night’s dew. No memories. Just tree.

“Hello, Mr. Tree.” This is the point when Bill would tell her to stop drinking. “Were you alive, back in the days of magic? Maybe?” She pauses, ponders the question. “I don’t know if all trees live hundreds of years or if that’s just the outliers. I was never a big fan before the whole… magic thing. No offence.”

The tree very kindly takes no offence. She should know what kind of tree it is, at least. Why is she so bad at nature? Why did the world deliver her magic on a silver platter, the chance of a lifetime, just to land her with a set of rules that she is hopeless at following? It feels needlessly cruel. Carolyn could have walked the other way that day, Eve could have not gotten her mixed up for Dr. Sterne, the one who was supposed to be the recipient of her sales pitch. She could have decided that Carolyn’s offer to “meet me after, by the bar” was just a weird proposition and not the beginning of a promising mystery.

“Do you think I’d regret giving up?”

It’s a hard question to ask of an inanimate being, Eve feels. Maybe she’s just trying to shift blame.

“Do you think I can even make it?”

She leans her forehead against the cool bark, breathes in the mossy scent. A tree is just a tree, she realizes. A tree is a tree and a flower is a flower and a bird is a bird and so what if she can or can’t connect to them? The act feels like a waste of time, regardless of the result.

Is there anything about nature magic she actually _wants_ to do? Or is she just hoping it’ll be appealing to her once the inner peace sets in?

She lets the wine glass drop to the forest floor, carpeted in weeds and soft dirt, presses both hands against the tree. She is practically hugging it now, and anyone who saw it would think she was a weirdo, but there is nobody around. There never is.

Her mind is empty. She doesn’t want. Doesn’t want anything. Success is pointless.

She stands, slightly unsteady, hugging a tree, but slowly, gradually, she is elsewhere. She is taller, and stiffer, and instead of arms she has dozens of branches spreading out in every direction, sprouting leaves at countless points. She has roots digging down into the ground, she has bark protecting her softer insides.

She is a tree.

And then she is Eve again, because being a tree is about as thrilling as one would expect.

She walks back inside, leaving the glass on the ground somewhere. A feeling a little like a hand clamping down on her throat is beginning to intensify, until it’s hard to breathe. She tries to think of something else, but she can’t think of anything, actually. The perfect clearing of the mind. Bill would be proud, except for the fact that she can’t fill her lungs, and her legs feel leaden, and her hands are so numb she can hardly get the front door open.

She stands in her small house, crushed on all sides by an avalanche of green, visible even in the darkness of night, and watches everything from so far away.

It’s unreachable. It’s just unreachable. The world she dreamed of is gone, was gone before she even knew of it. She can be a sales rep or she can be a nature witch and both futures are equally appealing.

Her book lies on the sofa where she left it, carelessly opened to Villanelle’s crest. She leafed through the rest of it, had a glance at the other tomes she brought from her last trip to London, but she always came back to Villanelle.

Her vision is blurred by tears, and at a distance the crest is just a grey circle, all the intricate lines bleeding into each other. She stumbles over, drops to her knees by the book. Brushing away the tears aggressively, to make sure not a single one drops on the fragile paper, she lets her vision swim at the sight, lets everything else fade away.

Villanelle.

She plays the same game as before, her finger slowly regaining sensation as it brushes against the page. She traces the circles and dots near the top.

“This one means Villanelle.”

She follows the inverted y and its circles.

It means Villanelle too.

She marks the concentric circles and the triangle.

They’re Villanelle, they’re all Villanelle.

She whispers the word under her breath, her finger moving faster, drawing over every mark, for what feels like hours. It’s stable, it’s repetitive, it’s soothing. It marks her inhales and exhales.

Villanelle, Villanelle, Villanelle.

(…)

Eve wakes up with less of a headache than she expected. Maybe the neck pain from the awful sleeping position is distracting her from it.

She fell asleep kneeling against the sofa, fingers still following the lines of the crest. Sometime during the night, her hand slipped down to the floor, bringing the book down with it but thankfully not damaging it.

She straightens up, really feeling her age. The sky outside is painfully bright, although thankfully the sun only hits the glass wall in the afternoon. Still, it must be pretty late in the morning already.

She checks her phone on her way to pouring herself some cereal. A couple of texts from Bill, the first asking how her night of drinking alone went, the other a few hours later commenting on how he feels he already knows the answer. She cradles the device in one hand while she gobbles down spoonfuls of her breakfast with the other.

_Eve: I got super drunk and fell asleep on the floor._

_Bill: Your elegance and refinement know no bounds._

_Eve: I also became a tree for a while there so…_

_Eve: Maybe the key to zen lies in alcoholism._

_Bill: That doesn’t sound right._

_Eve: I’ll suggest it to Carolyn next time we’re up there._

_Bill: Please let me watch that._

_Bill: But I’m proud of you, Eve. Maybe next time you’ll manage it sober._

Her amusement at the back-and-forth abruptly dissipates at the mention of a next time. The previous night’s panic is still fresh in her mind, and although it doesn’t feel as overwhelming in the light of day, she still has no answers.

Does she want this? A whole lifetime of this? The books are fine for now, they outweigh the frustration of failure, but if she does succeed and decides to stick around, for how long will they make the experience worth it?

_Eve: What if I don’t want a next time?_

_Bill: What do you mean? Do you want me to call you?_

Shit, she didn’t mean to actually send that. She doesn’t want to worry Bill before she’s figured it out.

_Eve: No, sorry, I just get dramatic when I’m hungover._

_Bill: Are you sure?_

_Eve: Yeah, yeah, don’t worry._

_Eve: Now I have to go pick up the book drunk Eve flung on the ground._

_Bill: You must have been well and truly smashed if even the books got it._

_Eve: I was very distraught at the loss of my drinking buddy._

Cereal finished, she leans down by the dropped book and very carefully picks it up, as if trying to make up for the previous night’s treatment. She pats the cover in apology and returns it to the office, where it belongs. This is what happens when she brings books out to read in bed. Disaster strikes. Or drunk Eve strikes, same difference.

This would be the time for her morning meditation, so she reluctantly settles herself on the sofa. The sun is already coming around the sky and soon will be shining right into her eyes, making the experience as wonderful as it ever is.

She closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath. Clears her mind.

A strange buzzing seems to be running through her limbs. It’s nothing physical, and it isn’t nervous energy, but it’s… It’s something. It’s new. It’s strange.

She takes another deep breath, and another, tries to push the feeling away, but the more she empties her mind the more it comes to the forefront.

It’s localized. It’s pulling her down and to the left. Against the instructions of meditation, she unfurls her legs, lies down on her back and tries to find the pull again.

It’s where the book fell.

She settles her palm on the carpet and feels a thrill like electricity run up her fingers. She taps to one side, then to the other, fingers digging into the fabric. What does the… tingling want?

Under the sofa and she shivers, jolts in place as her fingers brush against something cold and smooth, like a coin. She grabs it, pulls it out, nearly drops it again once she realizes what it is.

For a long time, she just stares. She doesn’t know what else to do. This is impossible, it’s impossible that she’s holding it, it’s impossible that it’s here, when just last night it wasn’t.

Did she make it? Did she trace the lines of Villanelle’s crest so many times that she manifested it?

Is that even possible?

The thought of telling Bill flits through her mind but is immediately pushed out by the realization that _she knows what to do with a crest_. She read it in one of her million books, the ritual that will summon a demon from its crest.

Villanelle disappeared from the world around the time that Sunny died. She must have returned to the realms of magic once the bind was broken, or else Sunny wanted to make sure nobody else would have that power and sent her off herself.

Eve looks down at the small crest in her hands. It doesn’t just represent Villanelle. It _is_ Villanelle. She could bring her back, right now. She could learn everything. All of the magic that was lost, Villanelle will know it. She can teach Eve.

She shoves the crest feverishly in her pocket and runs to the library. She has to find that book.

(…)

She sits on the bottom rung of her stairs, catching her breath and watching the mess she’s made of her nice hardwood floor.

A large circle, nearly a metre in diameter, spreads across the floor. It contains another, slightly smaller circle, that is pierced at regular intervals by a series of triangles and spirals unfurling from the centre. Within both circles is a complex pattern of geometric figures that, according to Eve’s book, serves to funnel the loose energy of a broken crest into a single point, that then concentrates enough magical essence to summon and pull from any dimension the demon in question.

“The mage invokes the demon, and in doing so, restrains him.”

She guesses that’s the other purpose of the giant diagram she’s just ruined Carolyn’s floor with. Demons can be fickle, and restraining them upon arrival makes sure they stay put long enough for their summoner to state their case vis-a-vis binding.

Eve not only has no idea how to bind a demon, but she’s pretty sure the greatest demon to ever mingle with humans wouldn’t exactly rush to fall at her feet either, so she can only hope Villanelle is reasonable and interested in helping magic return to its former glory.

Her old manipulative self sure would come in handy with this, but she’ll have to make do with what she has.

She pulls the crest out of her pocket and studies it. She made this, with magic. After years of sucking at everything she tries, she single-handedly found Villanelle, something nobody else has managed to do, for centuries. Now, thinking of what she’s about to do, she realizes she never stopped to wonder whether she could. She just knows she does. Every inch of her buzzes with anticipation as she gets to her feet.

She steps inside the circle and feels the hairs on her arms stand on end, like she’s been bathed in static electricity. It’s magic. _Her_ magic. Bill was wrong, she isn’t terrible at the cool magic. She’s way better at it, actually.

She breaks the crest. It falls apart easily in her hands. No magic words, no gestures in the air, just the thought of Villanelle held cleanly in her mind. She squeezes her eyes shut and feels an unnatural wind blow her hair into her face.

Something pushes her back, hard, and she tumbles backwards until she is sprawled halfway up the stairs. The figures she drew in black ink on the floor grow lighter until they are bright white and glowing, emitting a light so strong that she has to shield her eyes from it.

Everything goes quiet. The light is gone. Arm still in front of her face, she hears a high-pitched sound, like a tennis ball flying past her ear. She drops her arm.

There’s a… thing. A shape. It’s pitch-black and it’s moving too fast for Eve to tell what it looks like, until it suddenly freezes up by the ceiling, perched on a corner of the windowsill. It’s humanoid, like a profile that somebody forgot to fill in, like the shadow of a person but much sharper.

In a blink, it moves again, now clinging to the back of the sofa with one hand as the other scratches at its throat.

It vanishes, hitting Eve with a sudden panic, until she turns to find it dangling from the first-floor railing. She realizes it’s making little gasping sounds, breathing in with fast, forceful inhales, like it keeps expecting resistance.

She squints at its throat, but she can’t see anything there. It’s hard to tell, though, since it’s entirely and seamlessly black.

The creature – the demon – slowly drops to the ground below, the hand at its throat no longer scratching but simply feeling it before tentatively pulling away. Breathing more evenly, it returns to the summoning circle and studies with a curiously tilted head.

Eve watches everything, feeling none of the excitement she expected. Instead, she is torn between concern, awe and a sudden pinprick of something that really should have popped up before. Fear. Just a little tiny bit.

The demon faces her. It’s hard to tell where exactly its face is turned, since there are no edges or shadows to it, but somehow Eve knows right away when its attention focuses on her. It comes closer and she fights the urge to squirm away.

“Anna?” it asks in a woman’s voice.

She swallows thickly. What is Anna? Is it a name or just a word in some foreign language? Before she can say anything, the demon comes even closer, and the sensation of static electricity returns with its proximity. She shakes her head, a tiny little motion, and it leans backwards.

“Gde Anna?”

“What?” she finally manages to squeak out, and then the demon squints, and she has no idea how she knows that it squints, and then there is the strangest sensation in her head, like someone is gently poking at her brain. She suppresses a shiver.

“Ah,” the demon exclaims. It seems… curious. Or confused. Or both. “English. But… strange English.” It pauses in its speech and continues to stare at Eve. It takes her a while to realize that the shadow in front of her is no longer a shadow, that the face suddenly has all the parts of a face, that she can finally see human eyes.

Not human. Decidedly not human.

The demon now looks like a woman. Young, mid-20s, tall, blonde, pretty. The abstract emotion Eve sensed from her has now condensed into its matching facial expression. She’s wearing ink-stained jeans, fuzzy socks and a loose blouse only half tucked in. Eve doesn’t need to look down to know she’s wearing the exact same outfit.

“You are not Anna.” She speaks with a hint of an accent, which is strange, because she’s clearly just learned the language by reading it off of Eve’s mind. Which is so creepy but also _so cool_ and Eve wants to learn how to do that one _immediately._ “Where is she?”

“I, uh, I don’t know who that is.”

The answer makes the demon laugh. It’s a loud, surprised, booming cackle of a laugh. Almost at once, the amusement is gone and her brow is deeply furrowed.

“You are strange. You feel one way with eyes closed and another with them open.” Eve blinks, mind blank. What does that even mean? “And you do not know Anna.”

“Well, it’s been a while… since you were last on Earth.” Will Villanelle get mad? Eve feels like she’d be upset if she woke up from a nap and found out she’d skipped ahead a few centuries. “Maybe Anna isn’t here any more? Unless she’s a demon, I guess.”

The demon pauses and looks around the room. Eve can only imagine how many things are modern enough to be foreign to her. She takes it in with a slow hum and an appreciative nod.

“Hmm. I see. Well, I have to go and find Anna now.”

“Wait, don’t!” She launches herself up from the stairs and reaches out, although all Villanelle has done is turn around, and for a brief moment her fingers dig into the demon’s left side, just above the waist. It’s a completely unexpected sensation, like plunging them into fog so deep it has become gelatinous. She pulls her fingers back and hopes that it isn’t a huge breach of etiquette.

Thankfully, Villanelle doesn’t seem very bothered.

“It was nice of you to bring me here, but if you are not Anna and you do not know where she is, you’re useless to me.”

“But I want to ask you questions, and I-” Villanelle starts walking off. Eve’s voice goes higher. “I, uh, I- you’re restrained! Right? I… restrained you?”

How exactly does that restraining work, anyway? Are demons supposed to be flitting around a room while restrained? Shouldn’t they be stuck in the circle?

Villanelle’s booming cackle is answer enough.

“But… I invoke the demon and in doing so restrain him?”

“Yes. You’re supposed to do both of them,” Villanelle points out like it’s so self-evident.

“I thought it was cause and effect.”

“Nope, two separate things. It’s ambiguously worded, but it’s not incorrect.”

“Stupid translations!” she yells out before she can stop herself, and Villanelle laughs at her once more. She kicks at the stupid useless circle, now just inert black ink on the floor.

“Hey, you were the one who wasn’t cautious, so don’t get your knickers in a twist-” Villanelle cuts herself off abruptly, face a perfect mask of disgust at the phrase that has just left her lips. “You talk like that? That is _such_ a weird thing to say.”

“It’s a phrase,” Eve offers defensively, because of course she’s debating this now, of course they’re going to talk about anything but magic.

“It’s a stupid phrase. Why would your underwear get twisted?” Eve just shrugs. Kicks the circle again. Some of the ink rubs off and ruins the patterns, but of course nothing happens. “English has always had weird phrases, but this one takes the cake-” She pauses again, takes a deep frustrated breath. Eve bites back a smile.

“Well, I can’t make you stay,” she begins cautiously. Villanelle is now walking up to the glass wall and resting a hand on it tentatively. “But could you? Just for a little while? I have so many questions and nobody else can answer them, magic is so different from when you left.”

“No. I have to go.”

“Please, just a-”

Villanelle’s frame goes tense, like a growing undercurrent of impatience has burst past her defences and overtaken her. The glass she was touching cracks, then the cracks multiply to fill the entire pane before they explode into the room, filling the floor with glittering little gems. A few bounce harmlessly off Eve’s jeans or the thin fabric of her blouse, and scatter all around her.

“Do not get in my way, Eve.” She hasn’t given her name, but of course the demon knows it. She’s been inside her head. The sight of the destruction Villanelle has just caused makes the thought a lot more chilling than before. She steps back instinctively and their eyes meet for one, two seconds.

Then Villanelle is gone.

(…)

_Eve: I may have just done something._

_Bill: Is it tree-related?_

_Eve: No._

_Bill: Is it alcohol-related?_

_Eve: No._

_Bill: Am I going to be angry?_

She stares at her phone. Yes. Definitely yes. So much yes that she doesn’t want to admit it. But she needs to tell Bill before Carolyn finds out, so he’ll be on her side and help her spin this in a less negative light. Or maybe… help her stop Villanelle?

She looks at the glass fragments that coat her living room floor, and the likelihood of the latter happening drops very painfully.

Her phone starts ringing. Video call. Her finger slips of its own accord to the voice-only option.

“Hey, Bill, what’s up?” she asks very casually.

“Turn on the camera, I want to see if there’s a body.” It sounds way too little like a joke. “Or a forest fire.”

“There is neither.”

“Fine, let’s see it then.”

“Oh, it’s really just… a broken window.”

An incredulous laugh. “How did you break a window with no alcohol involved?”

She bites her lip for a while instead of answering. She can’t evade forever. She’s already skimmed over the summoning circle currently seeping into every inch of the floorboards. Carolyn will have to get them redone if she has any plans of selling the house one day.

“… _I_ didn’t break the window.”

“Was it your angry frustrated alter-ego, Tallulah Shark?”

“No?”

“Do you have a second alter-ego you haven’t told me about?”

“Also no.”

“Are you going to make me keep guessing forever because you don’t want to tell me?”

She sighs into the receiver.

“Eve, turn on the camera.”

She clicks the icon gingerly, like she’s deactivating a bomb, then slowly turns the phone around to capture the scene.

“Stop,” Bill calls out when she sweeps past the summoning circle. “What is that?”

“ _That_ is the summoning circle that summoned the demon that broke the window.”

“Oh.”

A very long and painful beat of silence.

“Are you mad?”

“I’m actually very curious. I think we’re finally going to find out what Carolyn does when she’s _really_ angry.”

(…)

There are people in Carolyn’s crowded living room that Eve swears she has never seen before. In the three years since she started working with them, she naively began to believe she’d been introduced to more or less the whole crew.

She hangs in the back, sandwiched between Bill and smarmy Hugo, who keeps trying to make chit-chat.

“Wonder what’s happened this time,” he comments casually, eyes on the crowd. Nobody seems to know that it was Eve who caused all this commotion. They’re probably wondering why she’s even here. “I haven’t seen this many of us in a room since Trivia Night got cancelled.”

“There was a Trivia Night?” she asks, curious in an absent kind of way. He looks away and scratches his cheek at the question.

“Uh, full members only.”

“Right,” she drags out. “Why did it end?”

“Very heated argument over the year football was invented,” Bill chimes in. “Bradwell was going through the divorce, tempers were frayed to begin with.”

“Who’s Bradwell?”

Hugo squints into the crowd, finds a middle-aged man in thick glasses. Another one Eve has never seen before.

“Eve,” a clear voice instantly cuts through the din of the room. It’s Carolyn, at the top of the stairs, calling her up. Bill moves to follow, but Carolyn raises her hand and he retreats to his spot by Hugo. That’s not a good sign.

Inside the office, it’s just Eve and Carolyn. Despite it being about three times as big as Eve’s, it suddenly feels like a tiny little wooden cube that’s going to wrap around her and crush her ribcage.

“It is not often, Eve, that I find myself at a loss for words. How exciting for you, that you have managed it.”

“Carolyn, I am so sorry-”

“I won’t ask what you were thinking, because it is abundantly clear that you simply were not. Like a small child, or a squirrel at the park, you saw something shiny and all higher brain function shut off.”

“I should have been more careful.”

“You should have done nothing. It is so remarkably easy to do nothing. Observe.” Eve watches as Carolyn, true to her words, sits absolutely motionless. She doesn’t blink and, if she breathes, it is too light to be noticeable. Then she snaps back to life so abruptly that Eve nearly jumps. “There. It’s that easy.”

Carolyn offers a polite little smile to close the demonstration, which is somehow infinitely more intimidating than any stern face she could pull.

“I shouldn’t have summoned Villanelle.”

“Correct. You also shouldn’t shove crayons up your nose, in case that was next on your list of brilliant ideas.”

Wow, Carolyn is _sassy_ when she’s mad. Eve has to remember to let Bill know once she’s less scared and maybe he’s less angry at her.

“Okay, well, how can I help?”

“You cannot. At all. You’ve created a problem that is far beyond your powers to fix. We can only hope that it is not beyond mine. All I ask of you, and I will admit that it is quite a tall order, but hopefully you can… rise to the challenge, is that you _do nothing_.”

“Do nothing?”

“Yes. Sit tight. Do not interfere. If at all possible, engage in some quiet reflection. And, uh, get the glass fixed. If it rains in there, it’ll utterly ruin the hardwood.”

Did Carolyn forget about the summoning circle? Does she not mind it? Eve decides it’s in her best interest not to bring it up.

“Then, with all due respect, what am I doing here?”

“You are going to recount every single detail of your interaction with Villanelle, word by word, so that we may have any idea at all of what it is she plans to do next.”

“Oh, that’s easy, she wants to find Anna.”

“And who is that?”

“I’m, uh, not sure.”

“Crucial intel,” Carolyn says drily after a long pause stretches between them.

Eve shifts her weight from one leg to the other, then back.

“Look, I understand that Villanelle is powerful, but is the situation really so dire? I mean, whoever this Anna is, she’s probably dead, and once the initial disorientation fades and Villanelle realizes that, she’ll stop. Go back home or find a mage to pledge allegiance to or… Well, there aren’t that many options for a demon.”

Carolyn opens her mouth to answer and is promptly interrupted by the office door slamming open. A man stands there, out of breath. “Ms. Martens,” he gasps out, clinging to the frame, “it’s happened. A warden of the Ardennes Natural Park, in France, was just found dead. We confirmed with Kenny that Villanelle has passed through there.”

To her credit, Carolyn doesn’t gloat at the perfect timing. Then again, Eve guesses she’d prefer to be wrong in this case.

“It appears that she is still disoriented,” she says neutrally, as she nods to the man in acknowledgment of the news. She turns back to Eve. “Now, tell me everything you remember.”


	3. An understatement, I think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve lies to Bill and flies to Prague

Hugo comes down to the house with her, to help put up some temporary coverings over the large pane of glass that Villanelle has utterly shattered. It should at least keep critters from invading until a replacement can be installed.

He sticks around after they’re done, like he’s hoping she’ll invite him to stay the night, and on any other day Eve would grumblingly wonder how even this guy gets mastery of his inner thoughts and not her. Today, however, she is too tired and consumed by wandering thoughts, and so she only waves him off and collapses on the sofa with some instant noodles.

She wishes Bill had come down instead. She could sit with him and talk through all the doubts that have been growing in her mind, all the things that don’t make sense. But he stayed behind to sort out her mess. Everyone is sorting out her mess but her.

Anna is Sunny. That much is obvious, right?

Sure, demons can have relationships with people other than their bound mages, but Villanelle thought it was Anna who had summoned her, and she was surprised when Eve didn’t recognize the name. Clearly Anna was someone famous and powerful, not a girlfriend Villanelle picked up in her travels.

Eve didn’t think of that in London, genuinely didn’t stop to make the connection until she sat down just now and it was obvious. But they’ll figure it out themselves, right? It’s just so obvious.

Why doesn’t she want to tell them? She realizes she doesn’t, but she doesn’t know why. She wants to find Villanelle herself? She wants to keep being the top expert in the demon, maybe. Wants to know her better than anyone else.

They’ll figure it out on their own. It’s obvious. It doesn’t even matter that much, Anna is dead either way.

But Villanelle must know that too. Sure, there is the initial shock, but demons are just as rational as people. If they find their lover is dead, they don’t go on a rampage across the globe to find them. She knows Anna is dead. She knows she isn’t hiding behind a corner, or being guarded by forest rangers. What is she looking for, then?

It’s too soon to tell.

Well, that’s a horrifying thought. That Eve will need more than one corpse to be able to trace a path. And they won’t be linear, either, because demons can just jump around. Teleport. Maybe not without restrictions for the weaker ones, like Kenny, but Villanelle could skip straight to Brazil from here if she wanted. So she’s flitting around looking for something.

Kenny. He knew where she was. He could draw Eve a map of Villanelle’s jumps and travels. But nobody will let her get her hands on that, she’s supposed to be doing quiet reflecting. She’ll have to figure it out without him somehow.

She throws out the rest of her noodles and goes into her office. She needs to go over Anna’s biography with a fine-toothed comb. If she came back to this dimension to find that the person she’d shared a century with was dead, she knows exactly what she’d do.

She’d go home.

(…)

Two days later, her office has become a war zone. The door, which was always closed, now stands permanently open so that she can quickly reach the large world map she’s spread on the floor right outside. There, she sticks pin after pin in a system of colours that is beginning to confuse even herself.

The thing is, rulers of vast empires bound to a creature that can teleport usually have more than the one home. Anna, for example, had at least a dozen at different points in her life. There’s the one hidden away in the middle of the Alps, which Eve would have no chance at all of reaching, but there are also nicer ones. In Greece, in the Czech Republic, in France, in Ukraine.

That’s where the trail of dead comes in.

It’s awful. She really wishes there wasn’t one. But there is, and if she can get her hands on the information, she can try to extrapolate Villanelle’s intentions.

She chews on the inside of her cheek, pondering her options. She’s been through the biography three times, scavenging for more and more obscure allusions. There are a few more tomes she can check, some books that might reveal somewhere new, but most likely they will just reference the locations she’s already catalogued.

Maybe she can just google it. “Recent murders in Europe” or “strange deaths in Europe” or something like that. But in just two days, would it already be in public news? Especially if it’s international, there’s a chance that they’d keep it quiet to coordinate their investigations.

She searches it anyway, as many combinations of keywords as she can think up, but surely enough nothing pops up.

She has to call Bill.

Phone in her hand, she realizes she is making a decision. She could share what she knows, the map with the pins, the hunch, the name. With Kenny’s tracking, they could easily enough figure out where Villanelle will end up. Or she could keep it to herself, get the deaths from Bill somehow, find Villanelle herself.

She’s going to get into _so_ much trouble.

“Eve? What did you do now?”

“Nothing! No, really, I didn’t do anything.” She pauses, twirls a lock of her hair around her finger and muses on how she kind of misses phone cords. “I was just calling to see how the search is going.”

“Not well.” She bites her lip because she can’t tell whether that makes her happy or upset. “Have you got your window replaced yet?”

“What? Yeah, the guy came by yesterday. Lectured me for ten minutes on proper care of my windows. I don’t think he bought the ‘bird flew into it’ excuse.”

“I can’t imagine why.” There’s a hint of a smile in Bill’s voice, buried by fatigue as it is. They’ve probably been working even harder than her these past couple of days. Wondering when the next death would come by, how they could even begin to think of stopping a demon as powerful as Villanelle.

All reasonable things that Eve should also be feeling. And yet she isn’t. It’s like some part of her knows that all that matters is solving the puzzle and finding Villanelle. That she won’t hurt her. That then she’ll get to ask the questions that dig at her, get answers, figure out what exactly is happening. It isn’t even about the lost magic any more, she just wants to know what is moving Villanelle. What she is looking for.

“But the search… Villanelle. How are you- I mean… Has she…?”

“Killed many people?”

Her hair is now so tightly curled around her finger that she is tugging at her scalp. She stops, uncurls it, curls it again.

“Can’t you tell me _anything_? I just… Well, it’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t know this would happen.” It’s not a denial, and the thought weighs in her stomach like a rock. They all blame her for this. If she could just fix it-

“How many has it been? I know about the French guy, has there… Anyone else?”

Bill sighs, as if steeling himself, and Eve realizes that she actually really hopes there’s no trail. Even if it means no solution to the puzzle. The thought that these deaths only happened because of her is a little nauseating.

“There have been more.”

“Oh God, Bill, how many?”

“Four more.”

The words slam hard into her. Five people so far. Dead. Dead, forever, because of Villanelle, because of Eve. She takes in a deep breath, tries to exhale the knot building in her chest.

“In two days?”

“She’s dangerous, Eve. As long as she’s out of control like this, who knows how many more.”

“Where?”

“Where?” Bill repeats dumbly.

“Where did they die?”

She can do it. She can find Villanelle, make it right, stop the deaths. She’s confused, disoriented, but Eve can make her see it, right? That she’s hurting innocent people. God, she doesn’t have a choice. It’s all she can do.

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m… I don’t know, I can’t just sit back and wait. I thought maybe if I could map out the deaths, I could find something. Something to do with Villanelle and her past. Some place she might have met Anna?”

Silence over the line. Do they know that Anna is Sunny? Will Bill call her out on her lie? Ask what she’s holding back?

“Oh, Eve, you really couldn’t have known. We all agree that Villanelle’s behaviour is incomprehensible. She should have calmed down by now.” She wants to scream into the phone. She knows it’s weird, she’s well aware by now. She just needs those places, she _needs_ them, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if she can’t get them. “Wild demons don’t want anything to do with humans, tame demons are friendly… None of them go around killing like this. Carolyn is at the end of her rope.”

“I know it might not lead anywhere, but please, Bill. Can you tell me? I can’t stand not doing anything.” She laughs a little at herself. “Carolyn says it’s the easiest thing, but I’m climbing the walls here.”

Climbing the walls. Oh, Villanelle is going to have something to say about that one.

“Fine. You are a terrible influence and I am an enabler.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Thank me by not summoning any more demons.” A sound of shuffling that pulls Eve to the edge of her seat. “Northern Germany, outskirts of Hamburg. Southern Germany, around the border with Austria. Hungary, near a city called Eger. Latest death in the Czech Republic, between Brno and Vyskov.”

Four pins are carefully placed in the whereabouts of each death and she threads a red string around each of them, connecting them to the French pin and the other one that marks her house. Together, they draw a jittery pattern converging on the final death. It might be a blip, a step back on the bumpy trip to Ukraine or Russia or something. Or Villanelle could be going to the Czech home.

“Does that tell you anything?” Bill eventually asks, and she realizes she has forgotten all about him.

“Too early to tell, I think. God forbid,” she quickly adds. “But I’ll try to look for anything that could be in that path. I’ll let you know if anything pops up.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Eve. Go to sleep, do your meditations in the morning, take a walk to clear your mind. You’ll get stuck in your thoughts.”

“Thanks, Bill. You too. And don’t… Don’t do anything crazy.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Eve?” he replies teasingly. She laughs easily.

“I’m the only one allowed to be crazy. Otherwise this friendship would never work.”

They give their goodbyes and she ends the call. Then she opens her browser and searches for quick and cheap tickets to Prague. Time to be crazy.

(…)

It takes a few hours on a plane and a few more in a car but, by sunrise, Eve stands before Šumava National Park and realizes just how big it actually is. It looked so small on Google Maps, like there was no way for a house of any size to go unnoticed. But of course in reality it’s huge and she can’t possibly comb through it all and hope to be at the site of Anna’s old home at the exact time frame when both Villanelle is there and Carolyn and her group haven’t yet realized she’s stopped and made their way over.

She stops herself before she can succumb to panic or despair. She’s magical. She might not be the best, but she’s managed it before. She’s been a tree, and conjured a crest, and summoned a demon. She’s already done magic that hasn’t been touched in centuries. There must be hope for her yet.

She needs an aerial view. She needs to see more than the few trees right in front of her. In the absence of a conveniently placed hill or observation tower, that leaves… birds? Can she do birds?

Only one way to find out.

She sits down on the grass, watches a pretty little thing with puffed up chest feathers that is settled happily on a branch a few trees away. She has no idea what species it is. It’s brown and that’s the extent of her knowledge.

_Hello, little bird_ , she thinks to herself. What is she doing, trying to communicate telepathically? She resists the sudden and ridiculous urge to bring up a hand and wave. Best to avoid making sudden moves at the tiny bird. She takes a deep breath and fixes her eyes on the tiny little black dots on either side of the beak. Its head moves in sudden, jerky motions, like somebody cut out all the middle frames in an animation. It reminds Eve a little of Villanelle, a shadow skipping from place to place. Was she even teleporting then, or just moving incredibly fast?

Eve lets her eyes slowly unfocus, still fixed on the bird. A bird is a bird and a tree is a tree and a person is a person and none of it matters and it’s all the same, deep down.

And if Eve is a bird, Eve can see. And if Eve can see, she can find. And if she can find, everything will be alright.

She feels a pulling sensation, coming from no direction in particular, and then she is a tiny little brown bird on a branch, but she is still Eve, and she doesn’t control its limbs but when she thinks of flying up, of scanning the landscape, the wings by her sides spread out and pull her above the canopy of trees.

It’s so beautiful that she almost loses control and falls all the way back to Eve. She’s _flying_. Not herself, not her body, but she can see it all and feel the wind on her feathers, and even though her tiny bird heart beats frantically because, out of the cover of the trees, anything could strike at her, she only feels a long, unending thrill. From the tips of her toes to the hair on her head.

She tries to look more carefully, not sure what she’s really searching for. Anything out of the ordinary, but what exactly does that-

Oh. That will probably do. The circle of withered, hollowed-out trees centred on a house that looks both ancient and perfectly preserved. Eve is pretty sure that wasn’t advertised in the park pamphlets. _Come visit the creepy old house that kills the wildlife_.

With a sensation a bit like vertigo, she lets her mind fly back down to herself, and jolts up like she’s just kicked herself awake. At once, she’s off running. Because she’s found the house, and so has Villanelle.

As she steps across foliage and fallen logs, she makes a mental note to come back and visit later, when she isn’t on such a time-sensitive mission. The place really is beautiful, and it makes her feel more at peace with nature than a thousand days of her stupid house in the woods with the stupid mezzanine and the stupid garden and the stupid giant glass wall that any demon could come by and shatter and let all the bugs in.

Finally, a little sweaty and out of breath, she takes a step and finds herself abruptly in the area of death that she saw from above. She freezes, waiting to see if whatever did this will affect her as well, but nothing happens. A few more steps and she’s entirely out in the open. She relaxes her tense muscles and walks on, the house just up ahead.

It’s not a tiny one-room hut, but it isn’t a mansion either. It’s like a cosy little family home. Room enough for a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room, a big living room with a fireplace where the whole family could sit together and watch the snow from the window. Eve isn’t sure where the image comes from, but something about this place just screams “home”.

It might be the magic that Villanelle has clearly used to rebuild it from the rubble it must have become after all this time. Were the dead trees just to uncover it? Or were they a lashing out of anger, a warning sign that Eve should heed?

The front door hangs open and Eve steps inside. It’s warmer here, like the fire is lit, and she shrugs out of her coat. Everything is quiet, utterly silent, and she somehow knows that nobody is downstairs. She climbs up the stairs, which don’t creak even once. She hears something. It’s so soft, so slight. The sound of pages slowly turning. It stops and silence returns. She follows the sound.

In a small room, Villanelle sits on a faded rug, back leaning against a bed and legs tucked up just enough to support a thick book, its pages as thin as a Bible’s. Curled up into such a small figure, she looks young. Younger than her face hints at, far far younger than she really is.

“You again,” she says in a soft voice. She keeps her eyes on the book a moment longer, as if finishing a sentence, then turns to Eve with a smile. “You said it had been a while. An understatement, I think.”

Eve chuckles at the comment, spoken so casually. “More than a while?”

“Everything has changed. You have all these strange new things, and many others I remember have disappeared.” Villanelle pauses, studies the room around her, the woods visible through the small window. “The trees were not so close to the house before.”

“Is that why you killed them?”

She tilts her head. “I will give it back later. When I go.”

“You’re not staying?”

“I cannot,” Villanelle states simply, like it’s obvious.

“Yeah. You’re looking for Anna.”

“Yes.” She smiles, pleased that she has been understood.

“But you understand that she’s dead.”

“Yes,” she repeats, more sombre. “But I am still looking. For the remainders of her. The traces she has left.”

“Villanelle,” Eve begins cautiously. She steps into the room, slowly lowers herself to sit across the way from the demon. “Why did you kill those people? Because they tried to stop you, like I did?”

“Did I scare you?”

“A little,” she admits with a smile. Villanelle returns it.

“I wanted to go. They wanted to stop me, grab me, ask questions. But I couldn’t, I had to go. I _had_ to. I made them stop.”

“But you’re so much stronger than them. You could stop them with a flick of your finger. You didn’t have to kill them.”

“You don’t want me to?” She tilts her head again as she asks the question, like the thought is curious to her. Demons are like this at first, Eve recalls. The rules of their realms are very different. They need to learn what is allowed in this world. And Eve is sure that Villanelle wasn’t forbidden from killing, when she was with Anna. They were different times, and her witch was powerful. She must have made many enemies.

She shakes her head and Villanelle takes it in.

“I will try.”

“Thank you.”

Another smile. They are tired things, like Villanelle is happy but not enough to stop being sad.

“You loved Anna.” It’s not fully a question, not fully a statement.

“I do.” The smile slips. She is solemn when she says it. Eve’s heart aches for her. “Eve, I have learnt something about you,” the demon remarks casually.

Did she jump into her head again? Eve didn’t feel anything, this time around. Maybe Villanelle is getting her touch back with time.

Villanelle gestures at her own outfit. It is elegant and understated, clearly found at a very expensive boutique. A flowing dress in neutral colours, oddly light for the season. Demons mustn’t feel the cold.

“Your taste in fashion is bad. I did not realize at first, because it all looked strange. But this is nice and expensive, and your clothes are boring and cheap.”

“That’s a little rude.”

“Yes, I am rude. Anna liked it,” she adds with a nostalgic little smile. Her brow furrows a little as she mulls something over. “You remind me of Anna. I thought you were her, at first. But when I look at you in one way and the other, you are different.”

“Different from Anna?”

“Different from yourself. But yourself is closer to Anna than you.”

“I’m really confused.”

“I’m using the language I found in your head, but you don’t have the words for what I am trying to say.”

“So it’s my fault?” she asks lightly. Villanelle nods pleasantly. She _is_ rude. Eve thinks she likes it too. “What does it feel like? Whatever makes you need to find Anna.”

“It feels like…” She pauses. Is Eve’s vocabulary limiting her again? “Like something has caught me, a string, and it is pulling, but I cannot tell in which way it pulls. I can only jump from place to place and try to piece together where the string wants me. Find where it _doesn’t_ want me.”

“Is that how demons feel love?”

“I don’t know.” She looks off into nothing. “I do not have a term of comparison.”

Eve’s brow furrows. _She_ does. Kenny was in love with his last bound witch, Eve knows he was, but he stays put with Carolyn. No tugging, no strings.

“Villanelle, can I try something?” As she speaks, she gets on all fours and slowly moves closer to Villanelle. The demon watches her neutrally, only a hint of curiosity to her face.

She stops when they are face to face. She raises her hands until they hover to the sides of Villanelle’s head.

“I’ve never done this before,” she admits with a shaky exhale. “Can you help me?”

Villanelle nods, silent. Eve lets her fingers dip into her, dig into that strange fog-like sensation. She’s pretty sure that demons can make themselves as solid as people, but Villanelle hasn’t seemed so inclined thus far.

She closes her eyes, empties her mind, focuses on the body that connects with her own. A tentative thread of consciousness slips along her arms, brushes against the points where she and Villanelle meet. All at once, the barrier that stood there is lifted, and she almost falls into the woman across from her, almost plunges never to return again, until she finds herself tethered.

How easily Villanelle can guide her along, how easily she could take all of Eve and leave only a shell. How gently she keeps her safe, instead.

Everything in Villanelle’s mind happens too fast, flashes of everything attacking Eve all at once. She shields herself from the assault, focuses on the vague signs she is looking for. Lets the name of Anna echo in her mind and find purchase in Villanelle’s.

It’s there. Eve has never seen it, but she recognizes it, the shape and shadow of it, like a ship wrecked on the shore, left there so long that its planks have bleached to white in the sun. The sight is so wrenching that it pulls her out of Villanelle, away. She falls backwards, limbs trembling.

Villanelle is still bound.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Ever. A bind _always_ breaks when the bound mage dies. Eve can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be bound to someone who simply doesn’t exist anymore.

How sad it must be. How lonely. How hopeless.

She feels tears gather in her eyes at the way Villanelle just looks at her, like she already knew, or suspected as much. And now what? Will Villanelle continue to search and feel that tug until she drives herself wild with it?

She already looks so small, so sad. Eve wants to bury her in her arms, to lend her some warmth, some comfort. She looks so alone.

“Your friends are here,” Villanelle says gently. Eve doesn’t understand, until the sound of steps reaches her ears. Outside, a group of mages is sprinting to the house, among them Carolyn. They can’t do anything to Villanelle, Eve knows they can’t, but what can Villanelle do to them? Unstable, the way Eve now understands she is.

“Thank you, Eve. You were kind to me. Not many people ever were. I will repay you.” And then Villanelle is the one leaning closer, hazel eyes so close that Eve can spot every fleck of green and brown and commit it to memory. Her hands reach up on either side of Eve’s head, but do no awful digging. They hold her still, pleasantly solid for once, as Villanelle’s forehead presses against hers.

The feeling of a foreign presence inside her mind returns. But this time it isn’t searching, rifling through facts and knowledge. It pushes. Eve feels the push as a rearranging of her entire self. She falls back into shape. Everything feels the same, but it all feels different, and then Villanelle is stepping back and Eve is still on her knees, stunned, looking at the woman in front of her as she turns to her shadow self.

There is no darkness. Villanelle is every colour of the rainbow, each bleeding into the other. Villanelle is iridescent, beautiful. And then she is gone and heavy steps from behind Eve let her know that the mages have arrived.

Outside, the twisted and rotten trees spring back into life.

(…)

“Eve.” Carolyn’s voice is clipped, professional. Behind her, Eve sees some familiar faces, others unknown. She brought the whole cavalry to, what? Subdue the demon? They couldn’t do that with all the mages in the order.

“Carolyn, I can explain,” she immediately offers, before anyone else can cut in. The air is tense, everyone waiting for Carolyn’s response. After last time, what punishment will such a direct disobedience earn her? Is this finally it for Carolyn’s greatest disappointment?

“There’s no need. You may go.”

“What?”

What does “go” mean? Is Eve kicked out? Does Carolyn just want her to wait outside while they study the room? A quick look around tells her she isn’t the only one confused.

“I’ve no desire for your explanations at the moment. As you are of no other use to me, you may go on home. I trust you can book yourself a return flight?”

So she’s just sending Eve back, like nothing happened. Somehow, the complete lack of reaction makes Eve so much angrier than any chastising words ever could. Carolyn is just dismissing her. Like Eve has absolutely nothing to offer her. Like she’s a rebellious child.

“Seriously? You’re just going to send me off? What, because you’re mad that I broke curfew? Didn’t sit around waiting for everyone else to clean up my mess?”

“You realize you could have died.”

Carolyn never raises her voice. But sometimes her entire demeanour will change, the air around her will trickle with tension, she’ll seem to grow taller than the room she occupies. This signals that she is doing her version of yelling, and that is what happens as she faces down Eve.

“And the only reason you are alive is sheer luck.”

Nobody says a word, but Eve can feel them stare at her, silently agree. Eve is, as usual, the thoughtless screw-up. The one who can’t do anything right. The eternal apprentice who will never be anything more because she doesn’t even _try_ to check her impulses.

Well, they’re wrong! They are. Eve is the only one who understood where Villanelle was going, what was happening to her.

“That’s not true,” she insists. She takes a step forward, but suddenly she feels strange. Dizzy. In a second, it’s gone again. She realizes she’s been up all night, and that it is now full morning. She’s exhausted. “I just talked to her, she wouldn’t hurt me. We connected.”

“She has killed five people,” Carolyn says tightly.

“Demons don’t know the rules! When they come to Earth, they don’t know, you have to tell them the rules. You know that, Carolyn.”

A few mages shift on their feet. Eve isn’t sure whether they knew it too, and never considered that Villanelle hadn’t been told, or they simply feel uncomfortable at the way Eve is berating their leader, the most powerful witch in the order.

“You are not bound, Eve. She will not respect your rules.”

“She will if she wants to.” It’s not a very good argument, Eve knows, it’s too sentimental to work on a group that has come prepared for a fight. Carolyn narrows her eyes at the words in a way that Eve distinctly dislikes. Like _she_ is the fool for believing in Villanelle. “You’ve got her all wrong! You think she’s on this rampage, but-”

“Eve, if you please.” The imperative tone in Carolyn’s voice silences her at once. She already knows that it’s over before Carolyn carries on. “At a later time, I will request that you share all this with me. How you found this place, what you discussed with Villanelle, even the grand theories you have no doubt extrapolated from the experience. But first I would like to make my own conclusions. So, off you go.”

And that’s that. No more argument allowed. Eve has been dismissed. The crowd parts, letting her squeeze her way downstairs, where she stands alone by the door. Time to go home, wait to be summoned for her interrogation. She half-expects a couple of guards to be posted at her front door, to keep her from running off again.

Her coat still lies in a bundle where she left it and for a beat, she considers just leaving it there. What’s the point? What’s the point of trying, when nobody will let her do anything, or trust her, or work with her?

She sighs and reaches down because of course she isn’t leaving the coat. It’s her coat and she likes it.

Her hand wraps around the fabric, soft and familiar, then her fingers freeze, because there is more than pliant fabric underneath her hand. There’s something big and solid, that her coat has been carefully wrapped around to rouse no suspicions. Something malleable, that bends as she lifts it.

It’s a book. Villanelle has left her a book, hidden where nobody else would see it.

Suddenly, she is no longer hopeless, no longer despondent. She scoops up the coat and holds it tightly against her chest, in her best attempt at nonchalance. As she walks away from the house, she doesn’t dare move it at all, not even spare it a glance, just in case someone is watching. The same vague fear keeps her arms firmly in place as she makes her way out of the park, to her rented car.

There, she sets down the bundled-up book carefully, like it’s going to crumble apart if she pokes it too hard. Curiosity consumes her, makes her heart hammer against her chest, but something else makes her want to savour the moment, to postpone the revelation. She leaves the coat on the passenger seat and drives to the airport, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles go white.

She buys the next ticket back to London, makes her way past security with no luggage to check in. The waiting room is mostly empty and she quickly finds a seat reasonably distant from any curious bystanders. She unwraps her gift gingerly, lifting the fabric with the lightest touches.

She recognizes it at once as the thick tome Villanelle was reading, hundreds upon hundreds of pages. But when she opens it to the first, she realizes with a pang of disappointment that it’s written in some foreign alphabet, one she couldn’t hope to spell out, let alone read. She traces the cryptic letters with her fingers. What is Villanelle trying to tell her?

She skips ahead, leafing through the whole thing, trying to make sense of it even if she can’t simply read its contents. At first glance, it could be anything, but as she studies the hand-written words that are sometimes cramped, sometimes loose, sometimes written so fast that they are an unrecognizable scrawl, sometimes scratched out and restarted, she realizes it isn’t some old volume copied by hand as they all used to be centuries ago.

It’s personal. A notebook, or a journal. Filled with entries of a few pages each that are neatly separated by a long horizontal line drawn across the page. Every hundred pages or so, the script changes, like whoever wrote it was trying out a new alphabet they’d just learned, all of them in languages that Eve can’t even begin to parse.

Could it be Anna’s? Could this be what drew Villanelle to that house, of all the others she could have visited? But then how could she bear to leave it behind for Eve? Did she leaf through it only to find that the string was tugging elsewhere?

And if it _is_ Anna’s, Eve can’t even imagine how much knowledge must be contained in it. How much history, how much magic. Her fingers itch to think of it, so close but so out of reach.

She sighs as she waits impatiently for her flight to board. She has a journal she can’t read, a demon chasing shadows and some change in her mind that she hasn’t identified yet.

She feels better than she has in years.


	4. You are obsessed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve distrusts authority figures

Bill can’t stay angry with Eve, which is particularly nice considering that literally everyone else is. Even though she was right and Villanelle is no longer killing people. Just… bruising them. One guy got a concussion, but he’s fine now.

They probably all think it’s a fluke, a lucky break that will soon end. Carolyn certainly seems to believe so, and she still hasn’t called Eve in to be interrogated, so either she is particularly slow at forming her own conclusions or she’s hoping that the wait will break Eve’s spirit.

It won’t. But she _is_ getting a little antsy.

It’s been days since she came back from her little trip, cryptic journal in tow, and she has managed to learn exactly nothing. She’s identified most of the strange alphabets, through a mixture of research and Google Translate’s photo capability, but there’s a long way to go between knowing a text is written in High German and actually being able to read it.

She is no longer given the particulars of Villanelle’s travels, not just because Bill won’t help her break the rules _again_ , but also because Carolyn has now specifically announced that anyone who shares details of the investigation with Eve will be in deep trouble. Which is a bit of a hollow threat, in Eve’s opinion, since the only punishment she’s received in all this is the grown-up version of being grounded: it’s a lot like the child version, except there are no adults in the house with you to enforce it.

She also has _no_ idea what Villanelle has done to her. She feels exactly the same, or how she imagines she would have felt in the past, if something this exciting had happened to her then. She’s got endless energy, nowhere to direct it, and has defaulted to a research style that borders on manic. She can barely get through a conversation with Bill without half a dozen abrupt changes of topic and minutes-long pauses where she tunes out his voice because she’s writing down a new approach she could try.

And she keeps going over it in her head, again and again.

“Villanelle gave me a book. She wants me to read it. There’s something important in it. She’s been in my brain, so she knows what I know. So she knows I can do it.”

Unless she can’t and Villanelle was working on auto-pilot, remembering Anna and not Eve, thinking of Anna’s abilities and limitations, forgetting that ordinary humans only know at most a handful of languages.

One day, her high finally comes to its tipping point and she crashes. She hasn’t had enough sleep, her brain feels like oatmeal, she hasn’t made a single new conclusion in the past 24 hours and she really misses TV. God, she misses TV, it’s so mindless and stupid and she could just sit in front of it now and watch a whole afternoon’s worth of daytime television.

What’s the next best version of mindless entertainment, anyway? YouTube on her phone, probably, but her data plan is limited and she wants to save it for when she might actually need it. She yawns her way through a few rounds of spider solitaire, which succeeds in taking her from the oatmeal-brain stage to the sawdust-brain stage. Like oatmeal, but instead of everything sticking together, it all slips apart like she has forgotten the concept of a logical connection.

She needs something cosy, something familiar. Something she could do with her eyes closed and her mind absent.

_Mind reading for dummies_ , she realizes with a grin. A book she’s been through so many times, she could recite it from memory. That is exactly what she needs.

She makes herself a nice warm cup of tea and curls up on her desk chair, the familiar volume open in front of her. She makes her happy way through the introduction, old-timey and pompous and full of empty promises. She scans the index lazily, languorous. What inaccessible piece of knowledge will she pretend to understand today?

Ah. _To Discern the Thoughts of the Sub-Human Creature_. Baby’s first mind reading. Read the vague impressions that flit through the minds of animals before you go on to the complicated logical and emotional structures that humans think up. Eve flicks ahead to the chapter and skims through the lines for the set of instruction that has always struck her as one of those drawing guides where the first step is a circle and the second is a gorgeously-drawn sketch of the final thing.

Step 1, find the desired animal. Step 2, look into its eyes. Step 3, read its mind, obviously, you absolute idiot.

Okay, there’s a little more to it. But that’s what it feels like.

She’s halfway through the page, reading on auto-pilot, when she realizes something is off. She goes back, rereads the instructions more slowly. It’s…

It’s…

She snatches up the book, tucks it under her arm and goes outside, marches through the foliage until she meets a little rabbit that doesn’t immediately run off and instead stands on its hind legs, watching her with twitching ears.

Step 1.

She looks into its eyes, wide open and unblinking.

Step 2.

She follows the instructions she’s read ten times over, the ones that never made any sense, that always seemed like the verbal representation of an Escher painting. Her mind fills with flickers of sensations.

_Human. Human stopped. Danger? Safe? Bring food? Run. Not run. Watch human. Stay alert. Sounds. Danger sounds? Friend sounds?_

She steps back, nearly trips over a root, and the rabbit twitches once more and is off in a flash. For a long time, she stands there and watches the empty space it occupied.

Step 3.

Suddenly she starts laughing, loudly, startling all the birds in the vicinity, but she can’t help it, she nearly doubles over with it because she knows. She knows what Villanelle did and she has no idea how, not the foggiest, but oh, she could kiss her, and Carolyn! Carolyn can shove it!

Eve isn’t a failure. Eve can do magic. _Eve can do magic_.

She freezes. She turns around, nearly trips over the same root again, and hurries back to the house. All the books that sit inside her office are suddenly so much more than just fairy tales. They are actual knowledge that she can absorb and process and learn. Her entire body tingles with promise.

She slams past her front door and makes it exactly three steps into her home when she has what is possibly her third epiphany of the day. She is going to be so tired when the adrenaline wears off.

“I can read it!” she actually exclaims out loud. Another wave of laughter threatens to overtake her. “Screw you, High German, and you, weird Celtic runes, and you, Slavic language that Google can’t identify!”

She continues her proud abuse of every language on Villanelle’s journal all the way to her office, and doesn’t stop as she rummages through her shelves, although she does pause on occasion to mutter the name of the books she’s looking for.

She doesn’t need to actually learn the languages, like Villanelle did when she jumped into her brain to scavenge for Modern English in its latest form. She just needs a spell that will make the meaning of the words reach her brain, rather than the words themselves. German will remain German, but she’ll see it as plain old English.

Like the TARDIS does. Except this is real and not just a feature of a campy sci-fi show.

“Translations!” she says a little louder and she pulls the book free. “There we go.”

It’s a wonderful feeling, to flip through pages filled with spells and diagrams and rituals and suddenly have it all make sense. She can barely resist the temptation to stop at every chapter, learn just that one little spell. But she’ll have time for it later.

She finds the spell she wants. She reads it over twice, commits it to memory. Then she turns to the journal, flipped open at a random page, and grabs it carefully. She clears her mind, repeats the instructions, watches the letters on the page slowly morph, rearrange, settle into more orderly shapes. Groups of scribbles become words. Words Eve knows. Regular words, common words, lots of verbs and pronouns and prepositions and none of them are illegible clumps of consonants, and together they form logical sentences.

She scans the page hungrily.

“ _Anna sent another apprentice away. It’s just a handful of us, now. The others say it’s a good sign, that we must be the best. But she doesn’t look happy_.”

It’s the journal of an apprentice? One of the potentials that Anna had gathered before she decided to quit on a human follower and go with a demon instead. With Villanelle. Is that why she left this book for Eve? So she’ll know what Anna was like?

But if it’s one of her apprentices, won’t the journal necessarily end before Villanelle even shows up, whenever this person was dismissed? The thought deflates something in Eve. She wants to know all she can about Anna, but Villanelle is… Well, she’s part of it. Part of the fascination. Anna before Villanelle is a pale shadow of what the two of them were together.

She skips ahead a few pages.

“ _I learned a new spell today, by myself. Anna praised me highly, she even made the others jealous. She is always encouraging me to try to find the magic in the world, without resorting to books or teachers. She says I have endless potential. But I can sense her emotions, the ones she doesn’t show. Something upset her, I’m not sure what. I will try to find out, so I can avoid it in the future. I only want to make Anna happy. My Anna, who showed me everything. My Anna, who saw what nobody else did._ ”

The apprentice seemed to have quite an infatuation. Eve can imagine that. If she was learning under the coolest, most powerful mage in the world, she would probably also develop a bit of a crush.

She flips back, suddenly curious about this mysterious person. How did they come to study with Anna? And what made her choose them?

“ _Anna has given me this book, to practice my languages. She has taught me to write, and told me to do it as much as possible, until it is second nature. Once I am good enough at this language, she will teach me another. I am excited about that, because I love being taught by Anna. She is sweet, and explains things gently, and is patient with me. I don’t know what to write about. This book is so big and it will take me years to fill all of it with words. Will I be grown by then? Will I be Anna’s second, or will I have failed her? Will I be taller than her? When tall men meet with Anna, they must look down to catch her eyes, and it feels wrong. When I think of doing it, of her eyes tilting up to look at me, I feel something like a shiver. I think I am writing nonsense. I will stop now, it is time to sleep._ ”

So the apprentice started out young, a child or maybe a teenager. And even at the start, they already had a crush. They must have stayed with Anna for years, grown powerful. Why did she abandon this one, in the end? How did the disappointment come?

Eve lugs hundreds of pages forward, far past what she read before. A few entries are only technical now, records of magical experiments or tests that the apprentice performed. They seem to have mastered independent learning and be focused on pushing the boundaries of magical knowledge. It’s a sobering thought, that the apprentices that Anna dismissed as too weak were so far beyond what anyone in Eve’s time could hope to achieve.

“ _I said I wouldn’t dwell on it any more, but I can’t keep it inside forever. Anna avoids me, I am sure of it. It was easier to brush off when there were other apprentices, that needed more help, that weren’t as advanced, but they’re all gone now and just as I thought that her attention would return to me, she casts it away. She finds excuses to leave me and I can feel the dismay pour out of her like thick shadows when I show her my progress. It makes me feel all the things she taught me not to feel, like I am a child again. The helplessness curls up me like a vine and I watch myself do the things I shouldn’t._ ”

Oh. Maybe there is another reason why Anna sent this apprentice away. The last of them, surely the most powerful, but maybe also the most dangerous. Anna’s dismay, Eve suspects, was more out of fear than high expectations. What kind of magic was this apprentice doing, anyway? The notes they left are too complex and scattered to piece together, the kind of scribblings Eve would leave as a reminder to herself. Not very didactic material.

“ _Anna’s love has returned to me. I feel myself again, whole and light and happy. She returned from a long journey, that she should never have taken alone, and she looked at my work with joy. I had almost forgotten how it made me feel, to have her approval rather than her disappointment. I held her in my arms, her face resting against my shoulder, her hands tight against my back. She is mine._ ”

Eve isn’t sure what to make of it. Anna returned the apprentice’s feelings? Could it be out of fear? But how, if she was such a powerful mage?

Or wasn’t she? Could this mysterious person be stronger? Could it be that she summoned Villanelle, bound herself to her, so that their combined power could overthrow the threat of the last apprentice?

_She is mine_. The words send a shiver down Eve’s spine. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has expressed their feelings this way but, together with everything else, it feels ominous. Possessive. She skips forward, more and more pages. It’s almost all technical now, cut by one or two personal comments, remarks on Anna’s beauty or talent, confessed kisses. The apprentice was alone by then, just them and Anna and magic. They grew single-minded.

“ _Anna wants us to perform a ritual together. It is very complex, she tells me, and she could not manage it alone. She has shown me parts of it, but I don’t have enough to deduce what it will do. It is a delicious surprise and her excitement to perform it makes me all the more eager._ ”

Well, that one sounds like a trap if Eve ever did see one. She supposes someone obsessed enough might fall for it. Someone like the owner of this journal. If the ritual is what she thinks, then there will be no entries after it. She skips a few more pages of notes, until she finds herself at the last page.

“ _Everything is prepared. Even now, Anna walks to my door and calls out to me sweetly. My heart beats fast in my chest, my hands tremble and refuse to finish this sentence. I must calm myself. I will do this for her, and make her proud. Make her happy. My Anna who loved me when all others turned away. I would do anything for her._ ”

One slashing line, drawn with finality across the page, marks the end of the entry. The rest of the journal is blank.

Eve’s first instinct is to read it all, from end to end, every single page, but she knows it would take hours, probably days. It’s years of a person’s life, logged almost daily. Too much to go through. She knows she’ll read it later, if only because her curiosity would never let her pass up such an opportunity, but for now she wants to know how this relates to Villanelle.

Or, more importantly, why Villanelle thought Eve should have it.

(…)

She fell asleep at her desk. She remembers closing the diary, gazing off into the night sky as she pondered its contents, closing her eyes to better visualize the connections that could exist between Anna, the apprentice and Villanelle.

And now she’s waking up as sunlight beams straight into her face and makes her eyes sting when she opens them. If she reached any conclusions, they are forever lost along with whatever she dreamt about.

She turns on the coffee machine and sends Bill her usual “how’s it going?” text. She isn’t expecting actual details, but after everything, she feels it’s her responsibility to at least check in, make sure nobody’s died or been maimed, see whether Carolyn has bitten anyone’s head off.

The key is in those last journal entries, she’s sure of it. The ritual, whatever it was, soothed Anna’s fear of her dangerous apprentice. She shouldn’t need anyone’s help to bind a demon, since it’s a one-on-one process anyway, but maybe she just wanted them in the room so Villanelle could descend on them at once. Not give them a chance to run, or put up a fight.

It sounds a bit ruthless when Eve puts it like that, to lie so brazenly and kill someone when they least expected it. But she supposes if she was working with an increasingly unstable and powerful mage, she would probably also try to take the sneaky route.

She realizes at the third buzz that Bill has answered her.

_Bill: No big news. Still no deaths, which is good. Did you really get the demon wrapped around your finger that quickly?_

_Bill: Carolyn has been shutting herself in her office making “personal calls”, which we’re all very excited to gossip about._

_Bill: Eve? Have you fallen back asleep?_

_Eve: Sorry, I just found a demon crest and I was wondering if I should summon this one too._

_Bill: Ha ha._

_Eve: What? Maybe they’ll cancel each other out, like when you put out a fire with another fire._

_Bill: I suspect that tactic only works in very particular circumstances._

She taps her phone against her chin as she thinks. She doesn’t want to tell Bill about the magic, not yet anyway. She needs to say it in person, somewhere they can discuss what to do about it. For some reason, she has been growing suspicious about all this. Maybe it was the journal, with its big extended metaphor for the dangers of power and obsession.

Eve doesn’t feel too happy about knowledge of this reaching Carolyn. Will she get rid of her, like Anna? Well, considering the only demon she has access to is Kenny, Eve feels safe on that account. But Carolyn isn’t the warm, cuddly kind. Eve has no idea what she’d make of this.

If only she could get the answers she’s looking for, get all her ducks in a row before she starts sharing theories.

_Bill: I also suspect that you are bored, which makes me very jealous._

_Eve: By all means, come be bored here and I’ll replace you at headquarters._

_Bill: Would that I could._

She pours herself some coffee and takes it outside, to her little garden that somehow managed to survive despite the shocking neglect it has suffered at her hands.

_Eve: Fine. I guess I’ll reread my books for the eleventh time._

_Bill: Try to take your time with that, I doubt Carolyn will allow you to attend another auction in these trying times._

_Eve: Ugh, I’d forgotten about that._

_Eve: Now I’ll never get part 3 of Sunny’s biography._

She watches the strange name on her screen. Sunny. She almost typed Anna by mistake, before she caught herself.

She will tell them what she knows about Anna, eventually. But if Carolyn herself has decided she doesn’t need Eve’s information, or her _grand theories_ , then who is lowly Eve to disagree? But in a few short days, it already feels beyond weird to be typing out that nickname, such a bad fit for the real person. For Anna.

Something niggles at the back of her mind. Her subconscious has made a connection that she hasn’t caught up to yet.

_Bill: You did get part 2 fairly recently. Now you can take your time with those ten rereads._

_Eve: Already halfway there, I’m afraid._

_Bill: You are obsessed._

_Eve: With knowledge?_

_Bill: With Villanelle._

_Bill: You can’t see my face but I am waggling my eyebrows quite suggestively._

_Eve: Ass._

_Eve: And it’s not just Villanelle. I was obsessed with Sunny before I even knew her demon’s name._

_Bill: But Sunny isn’t the one you brought back through the sheer force of your fascination._

_Eve: Yeah, well, resurrection takes a bit more work than conjuring a crest._

_Eve: I’d bring Sunny back too if I could._

Would she? Now that she thinks about it, she realizes she isn’t so sure. Villanelle is powerful, and dangerous, but she also seems to be more… linear. She’s trying to find something she lost, no subterfuge about it.

Anna was clever and she clearly thought things through. She planned. Schemed. Eve is a little bit afraid of her. Of what she could do, not just to those weaker than her but even to the powerful. Then again, you don’t exactly become a world power by being nice and straightforward.

_Bill: Let’s not open that can of worms. Settle for reading about her, will you?_

The annoying sensation of something edging around the corners of her mind grows stronger. There’s something she’s missing, something obvious. She goes over their exchanged messages, hoping it will spark a connection.

Anna’s biography. She’s gone over it again and again for locations, knows by heart every chapter that mentions them. But she’s not thinking of those now, there’s something else. Something that caught her eye right from the start.

Back to the office, with her empty mug in tow, and she settles right down with the large tome.

It was a spell. A spell of Anna’s. It was somewhere at the beginning, before the chapter on Villanelle and-

There. How to read memories stored in emotional objects. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what she needs. And she can do it, of course she can, everything she needs is right there on the page. So elegant, too. Simple.

She opens the thick, heavy journal at the end, flips back to the last filled page, lets the strange words fade into something more familiar. “ _I would do anything for her_.” From what she’s read of the spell, it will lead her straight into the memory of the one who wrote those words. See from their eyes, feel as they feel. It seems so… intimate. Invasive.

It’s the only way. And all these people are dead, have been for a long time. No point in privacy, now. She closes her eyes. She takes the plunge.

_She sits in her bedroom, cross-legged on the bed. In her lap is her journal, which has become more of a notebook lately, where she keeps track of her experiments and studies. All the more personal thoughts, she prefers to share with her beloved._

_Eve feels the excitement, the thrill that runs through her and sets her body buzzing with anticipation. She feels the love thrumming in her veins, the love for a woman she’s never met, the love for her Anna, who has been her constant companion for over a decade._

_She tries to abstract herself from the sensation, to grow more detached, to observe more carefully. Who is she? Who is the apprentice?_

_Pale skin, long fingers crookedly holding a quill. Robes that cover her to her feet. Breasts? It’s hard to tell under the thick clothes, but it’s likely. So the apprentice is probably a woman._

_For a moment, there is a jarring sensation as she tries to move and her body doesn’t respond. Of course. She can only do what the apprentice did, so she can’t raise her hands, feel her face or hair, turn her eyes to study the room more closely._

_Anna enters and her eyes fix on her hungrily, and it’s Eve’s hunger as much as the apprentice’s, to see the face of this mysterious woman._

_She is short, with a kind face. Her hair is dark and bushy, rivalling Eve’s in volume. When she sees her, her lips split in a loving smile. It looks so real. Is it? How could it be, if she let this woman die? Eve feels her insides twist and light up in return, feels her mouth curl into its own grin. She feels love._

_Anna is dressed in finer clothes, but nothing like the luxurious garments of a queen. Not yet, anyway. For accessories, she has a few golden rings with colourful encrusted jewels, an engraved bracelet and a pendant at her neck. It’s a crest, like Villanelle’s, but even at a distance Eve can tell that it isn’t hers. It’s simpler, with fewer shapes, although just as mesmerizingly elegant. Is it Anna’s? It would only ever be symbolic, as no human can be contained in a crest the way that a demon can. But it would be a symbol that Eve can imagine someone like Anna would want to wear._

_A symbol for her followers to worship._

_She reaches out her free hand. The other holds a book, opened to a marked page. Is the ritual there? Oh, if only Eve could break free from the apprentice and fly those few steps, get a glimpse at the page._

_She gets to her feet, but spares no glance at the book. Only Anna’s face, its pull irresistible. Anna’s smile fades, just a little. She looks at her with serious eyes._

_“Are you ready, Oksana?”_

_She nods._

Reality jumps back into place and nearly jolts Eve out of her chair. This spell is beyond cool, but she really needs to work on the dismount. She takes a few deep breaths to break free of the strange sensation of otherness.

The experience was incredible, and it was all worth it if only to get a glimpse at Anna, the wondrous Anna, the stuff of legends. Who turns out to be, as she should have expected, just an ordinary woman. A little on the short side, at least compared to… Oksana? That was her name, wasn’t it? The apprentice.

But she hasn’t learned anything new, has she? She’s put a name to a journal, and that’s about it. It’s a disappointing dead end.

Unless…

It’s probably nothing. Nothing. But if it isn’t…

She doesn’t remember Oksana drawing that final line, the mark that ended up closing her journal forever. She remembers seeing all the words, that last paragraph in its strange script. But no line.

It’s dumb, it’s a hunch, but she’s going to try anyway.

_The room looks the same, but she is at the desk. As she tries to focus on the page, the world swims in and out of darkness. Something like a splitting headache hits every inch of her body. Reality seems invaded by static, skips, readjusts, screeches. She wants to bring her hands to her ears, block out the noise, but she is frozen to the body of Oksana._

_But it’s all her. Oksana’s limbs are relaxed, her breathing is easy, her quill slides along the page with geometric precision._

_Eve is the one who isn’t supposed to be here. She’s jumped into a place that doesn’t fit her. Everything happens in flashes, deadly against her fragile senses. Like nails on chalkboard, inside of her, everywhere. She pushes against the sensation. She needs something. She needs to understand._

_She blinks down at the page. Her hand lifts from the paper, dips the quill back in its inkwell. Her hand is…_

_Her hand is pitch black._

She falls out of her chair, tumbles heavily, can’t even move at first. All she can do is fill her lungs with large, rattling breaths. Even as the horrible sensation of not fitting in her own body fades, the realization of what happened to Oksana keeps her buried in horror.

The ritual that Anna found, the one that finally soothed all her fears of what Oksana would do with her powers. It was this.

Villanelle didn’t kill Oksana. Villanelle _is_ Oksana.

Her phone buzzes, loud against the wood of the desk. It buzzes, again and again, and Eve finally understands that it is not a series of messages but a phone call. She ignores Bill, still huddled against the side of the desk. The buzzing stops, then starts again. The phone drifts closer to the edge of the desk and falls, landing at her feet, so that Eve can read the name on the display. It isn’t Bill. It’s Carolyn.

“Hello?” she calls out, still dazed, once she’s managed to cradle the device by her ear.

“Eve. I’d like to hear your explanations now.”

She pulls herself to her feet. Through the window, she sees that the sun has travelled halfway across the sky. It must be mid-afternoon by now. No wonder she feels a little out of it.

“Oh, okay. Should I go up to London, then?”

“Excellent. I expect you in two hours.”

“But that’s-” is all she can get in before the call is over. She sighs against the receiver. She’ll have to leave right away to be at Carolyn’s on time.

No time to process her discoveries yet. She needs to figure out exactly how much she’s going to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, just slightly late eheh I've been having a very busy time with work, so there might be the occasional hiccup with updates, but I'll still try my best to stick to saturdays! Hope you like the chapter and come follow me on twitter @evesaxe if you'd like ^^


	5. Tinfoil time?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve conceals vital information

She shows up late. She was early, actually, but she was also starving, so she stopped for a quick bite and ended up late, with half a sandwich in a very crinkly paper bag and a tuna salad stain on her jacket.

She expected the house to be as busy as the last time she was there, but it sits empty and silent like usual, maybe because of the late hour. The sky is already darkening outside. Carolyn meets her at the door and brings her up immediately, no waiting in the living room and no berating on her tardiness, which is already ominous by itself, and the sensation only grows once she steps inside the office to find one other person there. A man, about as old as Carolyn, with greying hair and beard, a thick frame, and clothes like a monk.

“Eve, this is Konstantin, an old friend. Konstantin, this is Eve.”

Konstantin gets up to greet her with a quick handshake, and then all three stand, watching each other.

“Carolyn tells me you are the one who caused all this trouble,” Konstantin says pleasantly. He has a thick accent, something Slavic. “It is good to be a troublemaker, to test your limits. But you must learn to settle down, eventually.”

She nods at the cheesy life lesson, not particularly moved.

“I feel like you know more about me than I do about you,” she comments lightly. She moves to an empty chair and soon all three are seated.

“Konstantin is a fellow mage. He removed himself from society to improve his magic in solitude.” Oh, great, another zen master. “He sensed a magical disturbance when Villanelle returned to this plane, and contacted me to offer his assistance with her.”

“You can sense magical disturbances?” Eve immediately asks Konstantin. That’s pretty cool, she has to admit.

“If you are sufficiently attuned,” he answers, instantly ruining it with zen crap.

“So how can Konstantin help with Villanelle?

Carolyn and Konstantin exchange a look but say nothing. _Old friends_ indeed. Bill is going to love this gossip.

“Why don’t we focus on how _you_ can help, first?” Konstantin offers, very diplomatic. He’s the good cop in the interrogation, Eve decides. Still, she nods without protest. She is outnumbered, after all. “So, you summoned Villanelle.”

“Correct.”

“You… found her crest?”

“I’m not sure how. It just popped up in my living room carpet after I read about it.”

She hasn’t made a perfect plan of what to share, but she has settled on giving away everything up to the Czech house, since they know most of it already, and keeping the rest to herself until she knows more. She’ll figure out the details when she comes to them.

“Well, even if a demon has left this realm, a part of its consciousness remains with the crest. Perhaps Villanelle sensed your interest and it drew her to you.”

Eve nods, neutral. It’s a possibility, and she doesn’t know enough to claim with certainty that it wasn’t the case.

“Regardless, we have already been through the details of your first interaction quite thoroughly,” Carolyn cuts in, as much for Eve’s benefit as for Konstantin’s. Eve assumes the _we_ includes the account he’s received of it in the meantime.

“I do have one question, if you would. Before we go on,” Konstantin pipes up politely. Eve shrugs.

“Why did you do it?”

Eve is pretty sure that Carolyn would laugh at that if she weren’t, well, Carolyn.

“I don’t know. I’m bad at doing nothing, Carolyn said so herself.” That one pulls a laugh from Konstantin, a sharp full-bellied thing that ends as quickly as it started.

“But you were aware that Villanelle is a very powerful demon. The bound demon of The Enlightened One. That she could cause a lot of mischief.”

“To be honest, I didn’t think of it like that. My only previous experience with demons was Kenny, and he doesn’t exactly… cause mischief.”

“That is-”

The door suddenly swings open, cutting off whatever Konstantin was about to say, and the demon himself peers in, eyes wide as he scans the room and its three occupants.

“May I help you?” Carolyn offers, her voice betraying the slightest hint of confusion.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to, um, interrupt. I just saw that Eve was here and I wanted to remind her. About the cacti.” He turns to her, eyes pleading.

“Yes, thank you so much, Kenny. My cacti keep dying, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Kenny said he’d help,” she offers with as much certainty as she can, considering she has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Yeah,” Kenny quickly agrees. “So when you’re done, swing by the greenhouse. I’ll give you cactus pointers. Uh, sorry again, everyone. Bye.”

As quickly as it popped in, his head vanishes from the door frame and it slams shut once more.

“I do apologize,” Carolyn eventually says. It’s meant for Konstantin, but Eve will take the rare apology and run with it. “Kenny isn’t used to having so many people around the house on a daily basis. It seems to be taking its toll. Now, where were we?”

“Why did I summon Villanelle,” Eve reminds them. Carolyn turns to Konstantin, who shrugs slightly.

“I am satisfied with the answer. We should move on.”

“So, Eve, tell us how you came to find Villanelle. The second time,” Carolyn adds after a slight pause.

“Well, I knew she wanted to find Anna. So I looked up what places she’d associate with her. Past residences mostly.”

“Past residences of _Anna_?” Carolyn asks. This is it. Give them a little, so they’ll think they have it all. Give them what they already know.

“Well, obviously Anna is the Enlightened One.” Neither of them reacts. Of course they knew. Like Eve thought, it’s obvious. “Villanelle thought Anna was the one who summoned her, and she expected me to know her. It would be a pretty big coincidence for Anna to be some other powerful and famous witch.”

“And you did not think to share this with your team?”

“I didn’t think of it at the time. It hit me when I got home and it really seemed so obvious that it felt dumb to share. It would be like, I don’t know, calling you up to let you know Villanelle can teleport.”

They nod, not looking entirely convinced. Eve should have shared it at the time, she knows it was a mistake. Now they don’t trust her, expect her to hide more.

“So you looked up past residences of Anna,” Konstantin repeats, urging her on.

“Yeah, I found a few. Then I, uh, got Bill to give me the locations of Villanelle’s kills. To see where it led.”

“You said yourself that she can teleport,” Carolyn reminds her. “Why not travel directly to the place she hoped to reach?”

“I don’t think she knew where she was going. It was, what was the word? Disorientation. Like a drunk person stumbling home. She kept skipping around, feeling her way there.”

“You did not share this with the team either?”

Konstantin is really getting on Eve’s nerves. Of course she didn’t share it, or she wouldn’t have been there hours before them. If he wants to accuse her of something, he should just do it. They both should. She sighs, lets it work in her favour as she looks away.

“I wanted to go alone.” Technically true. “I felt guilty about what happened. About the people that died because of me.” Also true. Perhaps not entirely connected by cause and effect. “I thought… At my house, when I summoned Villanelle, I thought we connected. She didn’t hurt me. She talked to me, even joked around. When I tried to keep her there, she broke the glass, but she didn’t touch me.”

“Joked around?” Konstantin asks with eyes playfully widened.

“She laughed at me because I forgot to restrain her.”

Another of his booming laughs. Eve sulks a little, lets her lips curl downward. It’s good, that he’s laughing at this. It will lower his suspicion if he thinks she’s useless.

In the lull before the next question, she finally realizes what she’s doing. It’s a little rusty, not quite up to her previous standards, but she is scheming and planning and manipulating, isn’t she? God, this Villanelle situation is the best thing that could have happened to her.

Except for the deaths. She could do without the deaths.

“So you went alone, motivated by guilt and the _hunch_ that you and Villanelle had connected,” Carolyn offers. Her way of furthering the interrogation is less leading question and more deprecating comment, which isn’t much better. “How did that work out for you?”

“I’m still alive?”

This time, Konstantin just smiles. Maybe he’s beginning to feel like his laugh is a bit of a nuisance.

“Did she… joke around more?” he encourages.

Eve purses her lips, looks down. “No, she was… She was pretty one-note.”

“And which note was that?”

“Anna. She just talked about her. About how she wanted to find her. She seemed to understand that Anna was dead, but…” She trails off with a shrug. “I guess she’s still disoriented?”

Konstantin nods, thoughtful. Eve has a bad feeling about him, but she can’t figure out why. He looks like a washed-out Father Christmas, sitting there in his coarse robes. There are a few gold bands on his fingers and a gold chain running under the chest of the robes. Eve pictures a crucifix hidden under there, for some reason.

“Did _you_ say anything? Try to get her away from the topic?”

“I tried not to interfere too much, she gets nervous if you push it. But I did ask her not to kill people. It seems to have stuck so far, though I haven’t really been in the loop lately. And like Carolyn said, we aren’t bound, so my word is really just a gentle suggestion. Who knows what Villanelle will decide to do.”

She turns to Carolyn expectantly then, and when Konstantin joins her, she knows she’s won.

“There have been no more deaths since. But she seems to be growing less restrained. A man was hospitalized with a broken arm and collarbone.”

Konstantin grimaces a little at the information. Eve doesn’t like it any more than him. Villanelle must be getting more confused, and unlike all this talk of disorientation fading, Eve is convinced by now that things will only get worse as Villanelle’s bond with Anna pulls her harder.

“Did she do anything to you?”

Carolyn’s question startles Eve. What does she mean? She tries not to offer resistance, swings with her instinct with minimal changes.

“Do anything? Like what?”

Carolyn tilts her head imperceptibly. “Like… anything.” Eve’s brow furrows, like she has no idea what Carolyn is getting at. “You were on the ground, when we arrived.”

“Oh! Sorry, I wasn’t following you at all,” she comments with an awkward chuckle. “I was just... sitting there. Villanelle was sitting down when I got there, so I sat down too.”

“Sitting down?”

“I was surprised too, but I guess sometimes demons just sit down and… chill.”

“Maybe she was tired from all the murder,” Konstantin offers dryly. Eve thought he was the good cop.

“Maybe? But she was just sitting there. Looking out the window.” Offering information before they ask, another great way to shift attention away from what you’re trying to hide.

“So you arrived, you found Villanelle sitting down and you sat down too. Then she talked about Anna and you asked her not to kill people. Then she left.”

“More or less. She left because you arrived.”

“Did she say that?”

“Yep. She said my friends were here.”

“Why didn’t she leave when _you_ arrived?”

Because she hates crowds? Because Eve’s _friends_ came prepared for a fight? Because Villanelle did connect with Eve, and she’s the only person she wants to see? She tries to find an angle to swing with and gives up with a shrug.

“I don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask her.” It wasn’t supposed to sound contrary, but it does a little. They all know she’s being interrogated, though, so surely she gets some leeway on her attitude. “Is there anything else I can help with? Any more questions or… Maybe if you tell me where the attacks are happening, I could try to find where she’s going next.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Carolyn immediately cuts in. “Konstantin? Is there anything you’d like to ask of Eve, before you leave?”

“No, I think I am satisfied. I will let you know, if I think of anything.”

He gets up from his chair, walks up to Carolyn and says his goodbyes with a kiss to her hand. Eve _really_ hopes he isn’t going to do that to her.

As he leans, the chain hidden under his robe shifts and falls out. He doesn’t notice it right away, only when he has straightened up and walked halfway across the room.

Eve blinks. She looks away as quickly as she can, doesn’t let her eyes linger. Casual, she needs to be casual. Konstantin puts away his pendant, greets her from a distance with a small nod, and leaves.

She lets out the breath she’s been holding. Konstantin is _not_ whoever he claims to be. But can she trust Carolyn with that information? If Konstantin is such an old friend, she must know. Eve clenches her fists, suddenly lost in a maze of conspiracies.

“Konstantin is… an interesting man,” she eventually voices.

Carolyn looks up from her phone, which she turned to check once Konstantin was out of the room. Apparently Eve doesn’t qualify for phone etiquette.

“He is very powerful. And a better ally than enemy.”

That’s a lot colder than she was a moment ago. Eve isn’t sure whether that’s a good or bad sign.

“So he’s a hermit? Lives alone in the mountains somewhere?”

“I’m not sure that it’s a mountain.”

“Right, but he isn’t in any other order or group or… association?”

“No, he is entirely independent.”

Entirely independent _her ass_. Entirely independent people don’t go around wearing the crest of the Enlightened One. A crest that Eve hasn’t seen, not even as a distant mention, in any book or publication. That she only knows about because she saw it around the neck of Anna herself, in Villanelle’s memories.

“And what’s that weird pendant he’s got? It looks a little like Villanelle’s crest,” she comments casually. “Is it another demon?”

“There is a reason, Eve, why one would wear something under their clothes, and I think you’ll find it is typically because they don’t wish it to be discussed.”

Of course Carolyn would avoid the question. But is she just establishing boundaries or does she know the truth? That a follower of Anna just happened to reach out the moment her demon showed up again. That has to mean something, and whatever it is, it can’t be good.

“Okay, then,” Eve says, showing what she hopes is the appropriate amount of displeasure at the rejection. She slaps the arms of her chair and gets up. She isn’t getting anything more out of Carolyn tonight. “Do you have any more questions, or am I free to go?”

“You may go,” Carolyn replies, then abruptly fixes her with an intense stare. “And Eve?”

She stops and turns to Carolyn, expectant.

“You have a little…” She points out her side, scrapes at it. “A little tuna salad, there.”

Eve sighs. Of course.

(…)

She’s down the stairs and halfway to the door when she remembers Kenny and the cacti. She hangs back, watching the greenhouse, then throws another glance upstairs. Carolyn still hasn’t left her office.

She heads back inside the house, then out through the sliding doors to the patio and into the greenhouse. Kenny is immediately on her.

“Oh my God, Eve, what did Villanelle do to you?” he asks in a frightened whisper.

“What? What do you mean? Did something happen to me?”

Can Kenny see it? He’s a demon, he must see that Villanelle did something, fixed something in Eve’s mind. Maybe he’ll know what it was. At least something good will come of this trip.

“Right, so, you know how I’ve been helping track Villanelle?” She nods. “That’s because demons have this, uh, sixth sense? We can sense magic sources. So, mages and demons, basically. And the more powerful someone is, the stronger their signature. On our, like, mind maps. Or something.”

“Okay. Did something happen to my signature?”

“Yeah, a massive, massive something. You were always a bit – no offence – a bit weak. Like a flickering thing. I’m attuned to nature magic, so I’d mostly see that one. And you’ve never had much of it, and maybe even less as time goes on? Which is not ideal.” She nods along, trying to contain her impatience, which Kenny doesn’t seem to pick up on at all.

“Anyway, tonight I suddenly felt this huge power source in the office, I thought there was an attack or something.” He pauses, goes a bit sheepish. “That’s why I, uh, burst in like that. But it was just you. You’ve gone, like, supernova since Villanelle.”

That’s it, that’s exactly what she felt! Exactly what happened. She’s gone supernova.

“So what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure. Did she do something?”

“She kind of, um…” Eve awkwardly steps closer to Kenny, who freezes up like a deer in headlights. Her hands reach up to his head as she tilts hers forward, but she doesn’t actually touch him, because she’s afraid he’d yelp or something. “She cradled my head in her hands and touched her forehead to mine, very gently. And I felt like something was rearranging in my mind. Like she was pushing it into place.”

She steps back again, and the look of concentration on Kenny’s face strikes her as maybe a positive one.

“Did anything happen after that?”

“She didn’t do anything else, but when she was teleporting away, instead of turning pitch black like before, she was filled in with all these colours. Glowing.”

Kenny looks confused. His brows dig in as he chews on his fingernails.

“Okay, I think- But that doesn’t make any sense.” He switches to the other hand and chews some more.

“Kenny, feel free to theorize out loud.”

“Well, a demon can’t _give_ someone magic power. They can lend it, to help out with a spell, or they can bind themselves to a human and kind of allow long-term sharing. But Villanelle couldn’t just…” He pushes the tips of his index fingers together. It looks a little weird, which he seems to notice, because he quickly pulls them away again. “Just pop into your mind and leave some magic there.”

“So it’s _my_ power.”

“Yeah, it has to be.”

“Then why wasn’t it there before?”

“It was. It definitely was. But it was… blocked, I suppose. From what you’re describing, it seems like your third eye was blocked. So the magic couldn’t flow through and get out, it was all stopped up.”

“So nobody thought to mention that before?” Did Carolyn seriously let her die of boredom in the middle of nowhere for _three years_ and neglect to do _anything_ about the third eye thing?

Kenny’s mouth moves silently, opening and closing. He’s struggling with something, clearly.

_Carolyn_.

“If my third eye was blocked, how did Carolyn know I was magic? And why did she want me to join the order?”

“I- I can’t really answer those questions.”

“Can you try?”

Kenny shrinks away from her. “Well, I, uh, remember how I said you seemed to have less of a signature as time went on?”

Her fingers tighten into a wrist, and she doesn’t even notice it until her fingernails are digging into her palm.

“Carolyn _did_ this?”

“No, it’s not- You can’t magically cause that block. It’s a mental thing. When you feel discouraged, or shut off from yourself, it disconnects you from your magic too.”

“When you feel discouraged. Like when you’re constantly told you suck at magic, for three years, and that everything about your personality makes you a failure and needs to be rewritten?”

Kenny squeaks something unintelligible and jumps away from her.

“I can’t talk about this, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up, please don’t tell Carolyn.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not telling Carolyn a thing. Not until I figure out what the hell is really going on.”

(…)

Home.

Alternatively, the horrible place where she has wasted three years of her life and nearly lost her magic entirely.

Somehow, it feels less claustrophobic when it’s all out in the open like that.

Bill is coming over, for the first time in all the years they’ve known each other, because she can’t delay this conversation any more. She needs to talk to him, somewhere they’ll have privacy, about all the messes she’s uncovered since this whole thing started.

Are all the bits even connected? Or did she and Villanelle just happen to find each other through the coincidence of them both being absolutely screwed over by their teachers? At least Oksana got to learn a ton of cool spells before she went. All Eve has ever gotten from Carolyn is a headache.

Multiple headaches.

And how does Konstantin fit into all this? Why did he come sniffing after Villanelle, and why did Carolyn just welcome him with open arms? Because he’s a hermit who _improved his magic in solitude_? Because they clearly used to bang?

The doorbell rings. Excellent.

“Bill!” she calls out excitedly, and leans in for the very rare occasion of a hug.

“Eve,” he returns the greeting, sounding only a bit like he’s teasing her. “Do you want a bit of chit-chat or shall we go straight to the conspiracy theories?”

“You have until I’m done opening this bottle of wine and pouring it. Then I’m getting out the tinfoil hats,” she adds as she takes the bottle he so thoughtfully brought along and carries it to the kitchen.

“Very quick pleasantries then.” He takes in a breath. “Your home is lovely, your attire is _very_ casual. Wouldn’t kill you to add a splash of colour somewhere, you know, just a bit of an accent. What else? Oh, your garden looks mercifully alive. You are a very lucky woman.”

She finds the corkscrew and pops the cork, just in time to mark the end of his little speech.

“My turn?” she asks as she reaches for the glasses. “Okay, well, thanks for the wine, please don’t wear a hat indoors and I dare you to find a way to kill a garden in English weather.”

“If someone could, it would be you,” he points out with a smile, and accepts the full glass she has extended his way. “Tinfoil time?”

“Yes,” she drags out eagerly.

“Well, then. _Dish_.”

“First of all, because I know you love being the first to know, Carolyn’s ‘personal calls’ friend has arrived and he is a big Russian that she _definitely_ used to bone.”

“Scandalous.”

“I know!”

“Now what do you _really_ want to tell me?”

They sit on opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other, and Eve goes quiet as she tries to gather her thoughts.

“Okay, so there’s three things I want to tell you. Two of them are about Villanelle and one of them is about me.”

“Do I choose the order?”

“If you want.”

“Which order will make it easier to follow?”

“I have no idea.”

He leans back with a sigh. “Alright then, I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Let’s just… go chronologically. Kind of. So, I have Villanelle’s journal-” She cuts herself off before Bill can start asking questions. “No, that’s not going to work, is it? Fine, major events first, then I’ll jump back.”

“So, I summoned Villanelle and she thought I was Anna.” Bill nods. This he can still follow. Let’s see how it goes. “I figured out that Anna was Sunny, you know, the big powerful witch she was bound to. From that, I guessed where Villanelle was going and met her there. She was reading a book and after she left, I found the book wrapped in my coat downstairs. So I brought it home with me and translated it.”

“How did you translate an entire book in the few days since you’ve got it?”

“I used magic.”

“You can’t use magic.”

“Okay, I’m going to have to change the order again.” She drops her face in her free palm, already frustrated. “While I was at the house, Villanelle said there was something wrong with me. She touched my forehead and, uh, opened my third eye. And now I can do magic.”

“She _opened your third eye_ ,” Bill repeats suggestively.

“Ugh, please, not the time.”

“Fine, we will return to it later.”

She glares at him, but he only raises his eyebrows, as if daring her to contest it. She sighs.

“Okay, fine, whatever, you can be crude about Villanelle later. Now, where was I?”

“You translated her book.”

“Yes. Right. I translated her book and I also jumped into the memories of the last entry.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you,” she says with a smirk. “Anyway, the important thing is that the book was the journal of an apprentice of Anna’s called Oksana. She was powerful but also a little unstable and Anna seemed to be getting scared of her. The journal ends when Anna takes her to perform a ritual with her. Now here’s where it gets good: Oksana is Villanelle.”

“The apprentice was a demon?”

“No. Worse. She was human and the ritual _turned_ her into a demon.”

“Anna made her most powerful apprentice a demon, then bound her to her to use her power?”

“Yes! It’s a great way to get rid of any potential threats, I guess. But it’s also really heartless, isn’t it? Plus Oksana was definitely in love with her.”

“Harsh,” Bill mutters into his drink. “But now you know that she swings that way,” he adds, a bit more chipper.

“God, I hate you.”

“Carry on.”

“So, that was the first big thing. The second, kind of related, is that Villanelle helped me scan her mind- Don’t,” she quickly adds, once she sees eyebrows start to rise again. “Helped me scan her mind at the house, and she is, um, she’s still bound.”

“Still bound? But Anna is most definitely dead, isn’t she?”

“If anyone could secretly stay alive for centuries it would be her. But no, and Villanelle knows it too, that she’s dead. But somehow the bond didn’t break. So now she’s just stuck forever. Bound to… nothing.”

“What does that mean for the rest of the world? Will she just rampage forever?”

“I don’t know.” She looks off towards the woods outside, darkening in the twilight. “But she doesn’t seem to be slowing down, does she? You’d know better than me, I guess.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do. Either banish her or break her bond? I can’t figure out how to do either, there’s nothing about it in my books.”

She’s struck, once more, by just how sad and hopeless the situation is. Is there really nothing she can do for Villanelle? For Oksana?

“I assume you haven’t told Carolyn any of this, in spite of the fact that you were at her house not two days ago.”

“That’s because you don’t know the whole story yet.”

“What did Carolyn do now?”

“Well, first of all, she invited her _personal friend_ , Konstantin, to join her in interrogating me. And this is the other thing about Villanelle I have to tell you.”

“She is secretly Konstantin,” Bill guesses wildly, in a tone that is far too mild.

“No, ew, gross.”

“ _Gross_ , is it? Because Villanelle is so pretty and Konstantin is ‘a big Russian’?”

“Because he boned Carolyn!”

“Why would that bother you, unless you were thinking of boning someone else?”

“Bill, can we _please_ leave the groundless teasing for later? This is serious.”

That seems to at least sober him up a bit. He nods for her to go on.

“Konstantin spent the whole time with this pendant hidden under his clothes. But when he was leaning over to say goodbye, I got a look at it, and it was the same one Anna wore in that memory I saw, from the journal. I’ve _never_ seen it anywhere else. Only someone who’s really into Anna would know that something like that even existed.”

“So Konstantin is a secret Anna groupie.”

“Or maybe she’s always had followers, and he’s the last in a long line.”

“Speculation,” Bill pipes up, like he’s objecting in court.

“Either way, he must know a lot about Anna. And now he conveniently shows up when her demon comes back, and he wants to _help_ , like he can go out and subdue a rampaging demon and- and what if he _knows_ that she’s bound? What if it’s part of, like, some plan that Anna drew up for her followers?”

“A _lot_ of speculation.”

“The timing is suspicious.”

“Honestly, Eve, Konstantin seems like more of a solution than a problem.”

“What?”

“Well, think about it. If he really is a follower of Anna, then he might actually know what do with Villanelle. The rest of us certainly don’t.”

She pauses. Casts out for a response and finds nothing. She knows this isn’t right, that Konstantin is bad news, but for a moment the reason why escapes her.

“Do you think that perhaps you want Villanelle to yourself? And you’re threatened that somebody else might be able to take care of the problem and take her away in the process? It would be understandable, I think. Villanelle has woken you up from this depressive state you were stuck in, and you don’t want to give her up.”

“She’s a person, Bill.” That’s it. That’s the thing that’s wrong. “She’s a person, we can’t… Whatever Konstantin is going to do, we can’t. We can’t just unbind her, or bind her to someone else or send her back to demon-land. She’s a person, and we have to help her go back to being a person. And nobody’s going to do it, because it doesn’t benefit them, does it? They want a compliant demon, not a mage who’ll make her own decisions.”

“You said she was unstable.”

“So?”

“So maybe it’s for the best that she _isn’t_ a mage who makes her own decisions.”

“How can you say that? You can’t make that choice for someone.”

Bill drains the rest of his glass and sets it down carefully on the carpet.

“I think,” he begins slowly, “that whatever we do in this, we are making a choice. And if we do nothing, that will also be a choice. Returning Villanelle’s humanity, if that is even possible, carries as much responsibility for her _and_ the rest of the world, as letting her remain as a demon. You have to remember, Eve, that doing something isn’t automatically better than doing nothing.”

She isn’t sure how to argue against that. She drains her own glass and puts it away, fingers rubbing lightly at her temples.

“There was something else, wasn’t there?” Bill mentions after a moment’s silence. “About you?” She nods. “Was it the magic?”

“Kind of. There’s more to it. You already know that Villanelle opened my third eye, and now I can do all kinds of magic. All those spells that didn’t make any sense, they do now. It’s honestly amazing. And the best part is, it’s all me. Not to get all Disney, but the magic was inside me all along.”

“So Carolyn was right. She chose you for a reason.”

She laughs at that because oh, has he got it backwards.

“No, see, that’s where it gets tricky. Because Kenny told me that my third eye wasn’t supposed to be closed. That something like that only happens when you’re told you suck so much that you internalize it.”

“So Carolyn was such a poor teacher that she broke you?”

“I think she did it on purpose.”

“She _sabotaged_ you?”

“When I asked her about Konstantin’s pendant, she totally blew me off.” Bill quirks an eyebrow. “She’s keeping things from me, from us, and we’ve always known that, but… Now I’m thinking, how much?”

Bill leans backwards, blowing out a breath.

“So, let’s see if I’ve got all of it. Villanelle used to be human, but Anna made her a demon to control her. You brought Villanelle back, and she’s still bound to Anna, so she’s going mental looking for a dead woman. Konstantin has popped up to help, but he is clearly much more informed about Anna and Villanelle than he’s letting on, and Carolyn has a host of secrets, one of which is that she has tried to block out your magic. An attempt which has been undone by Villanelle’s magic hands.”

“She didn’t use her hands.”

“ _Oh,_ ” Bill nearly whistles out.

“I am getting us refills,” she says, and immediately jumps off of the sofa and away from Bill’s innuendoes.

“You are afraid of the truth!” he calls out after her.

“I refuse to discuss anything like _that_ until I am at least two glasses in.”

“Very well, I will hold you to that promise.” She hums happily as she fills the glasses and brings them back. “Now can I offer a suggestion, for all of the things we’ve discussed?”

She nods as she gives him his drink.

“Leave Villanelle to Konstantin. If you really did connect, then she will come to find you. And otherwise, you already know that he is the most qualified to handle her.”

“Maybe he isn’t. Maybe you were right and he’s just an obsessive fanboy.”

“Isn’t that what you are?” Bill counters, laughing at the glare she throws his way.

“And Carolyn?”

“Confront her. She can’t block you again, now that you know what’s happening.”

“Bill, honestly? I have front-row seats to the ongoing story of a woman who trusted her mentor and got turned into a demon for it. I’m not giving Carolyn anything.”

“So you’re going to ignore all my advice.”

“Absolutely.”

Bill sighs and takes a large swig of his wine. “Then why am I here again?”

Eve drains her glass in one long gulp. “So I can tell you _all_ about her magic hands,” she says in a sultry tone.

Bill chuckles and empties his own glass.

“The floor is yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Villanelle for this chapter, I'm afraid, but there is a whole lot of talking about her, so I hope that'll be enough. I do promise a triumphant return for next chapter eheh
> 
> Hope you liked it and if you want, come check me out on twitter @evesaxe


	6. Race you to the sex dungeon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve breaks the one rule she agreed with

Eve spends the night tossing and turning, pulled in and out of the same endless dream. She is Oksana, like before, stuck inside her limbs with no choice in their movement.

Sometimes she is young, sharing a bedroom with a dozen others or listening rapt as a younger Anna teaches her how to use her magic. Sometimes she is older, scribbling more and more details onto complex diagrams, walking the halls of a large castle alone.

Sometimes she holds Anna in her arms, sometimes she sits shaking with anger, sometimes she cries and the tears spill onto the pages of her journal and slowly vanish to nothing. Sometimes she is out in the sun and it floods her limbs with warmth and she feels _alive_.

Every time she wakes up again, Eve tries her best to recall the details and commit them to memory, until a few minutes have passed and consciousness washes over her completely, reminding her that none of these memories are real. That her brain has conjured them, entirely separate from everything contained in Oksana’s journal. Then she lets herself relax, fall back into sleep, try again to get some rest.

Towards morning, the dream shifts. She feels herself gently return from the distant memories, feels her limbs respond to her commands again. She is in a small room, leaning against a bed, in a house that feels like home. Her fingers brush against the page, following the lines she has written. She is Villanelle, clinging to the last of herself.

She flips over a few pages and taps the letters. She slips back into memory.

Eve wakes with a start. Bill is downstairs, snoring away on the sofa. The sky is bright, but not too bright, letting her know she hasn’t slept through the entire morning for once. She has a headache, of course, but it isn’t too terrible, and it should be better after some coffee.

Moving as quietly as she can manage, she heads to the kitchen downstairs and sets the coffee brewing while she looks at her phone.

She has an idea of something she could do, already had it blossoming at the back of her mind the previous night, but she’s sure Bill won’t approve. She glances at him, half-expecting him to wake up right at that moment, just so he can shoot it down. He doesn’t.

Well, that settles it then. She does a quick google search, fires off an e-mail and shoves her phone back in her pocket. Maybe her offer will be rejected, and she’ll save Bill the trouble.

She has her coffee outside, with the plants. She finds them a lot more agreeable ever since she’s given up on struggling for their approval. She doesn’t need them any more, she has _cool_ magic now. All thanks to Villanelle’s magic hands.

That brings her back to the previous night’s conversation, or at least the tail end of it. The part that got Bill to drink twice as much as he’d planned and end up spending the night on the sofa.

She didn’t really consider it until Bill brought it up, repeatedly and annoyingly. But she realizes all his teasing comments aren’t entirely baseless. Villanelle is, well, attractive. That one was clear from the start. And she’s funny, and she’s nice to Eve and gentle when she touches her. And she’s brilliant, and so powerful, capable of learning anything.

Eve wouldn’t have thought it before. There have been plenty of romantic and… _physical_ relationships between humans and demons, but Eve still remembers the foggy gelatinous consistency of Villanelle’s demon body and it isn’t exactly an aphrodisiac.

Oksana, on the other hand… She’s human. And Eve doesn’t mean to sound so anti-demon, or demon segregationist, or something, but… But, well, it makes her realize things about how she looks at Villanelle and how she feels about Villanelle.

She isn’t being selfish, is she? She isn’t doing all this just because she has a crush or an interest or an infatuation or whatever. Right? Or was Bill right when he said she just wanted to have Villanelle to herself? What can she even do that Konstantin can’t? As much magic as she may have bubbling up inside, she has no idea how to use it.

Which is why her idea is a good one. She won’t know how she can help until she’s learned as much as she can about the situation. And if her library at home, and Carolyn and Konstantin, and Villanelle herself, can’t provide the answers she needs, she’ll look in the only place left.

The sound of footsteps coming around the house lets her know that Bill is awake and coming to join her. She settles back in her corner.

“Morning,” she calls out to his approaching figure, feet dragging along the ground.

“Morning.”

“How was the sofa?”

“Surprisingly comfortable.”

“Yeah, Carolyn knows how to pick them.”

Bill sits down by her side with his own coffee, taking his time to sniff it and sigh happily.

“Have you been awake long?” he asks after a pause to take the first slow sip.

“Just for a bit. I’ve been thinking.”

“About Villanelle?” For once, it sounds more like a question than a sleazy suggestion. She confirms with a nod. “I’m beginning to think you’re using her to avoid focusing on your own problems.”

“Oh yeah?”

“At any other time, I can’t imagine you’d find yourself being able to do magic and just… not think about it.”

“I am,” she replies, defensive on instinct. “I mean, I’m using the magic to figure out the Villanelle thing. Well, it’s time-sensitive,” she adds in a huff at Bill’s increasing scepticism. He smiles.

“You’re going very far to find answers for Villanelle when all you have to do to find your own answers is drive up to London.”

“Like Carolyn would tell me anything.” He nods thoughtfully at that. “Anyway, speaking of answers… I actually might have found a way to get my hands on some.”

“Open and honest communication?”

She laughs.

“No, I’m going to do something _really_ naughty.”

“Of course you are. You know, if you don’t tell me, I can claim plausible deniability with Carolyn.”

“Okay.”

She shrugs, mimes zipping her lips shut. He looks at her, suspicious, and she offers up her most innocent smile. He rolls his eyes.

“Tell me.”

“Okay, okay, so this morning, or maybe last night, I realized there’s a huge source of information we haven’t been considering.”

“It’s not the Internet, is it?” Bill asks despondently.

“Nope. It is…” She considers doing a little drum roll, if only to get rid of the giddy energy already coursing through her limbs at the thought, but a quick look at Bill’s face lets her know it would be in poor taste. “Peel. It’s Peel.”

For a moment, there is only silence, and the chirping of a single solitary bird up on a tree.

“You're joking.” She shakes her head sheepishly. “ _Peel_? As in Aaron Peel, as in-” He cuts himself off in the face of Eve’s enthusiastic nodding. “This is a bad idea.”

“Well, I already did it.” Bill’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “I sent off an e-mail this morning, offered a deal. He lets me use his library and I have lunch with him, answer some of his magic questions.”

“Eve, this is Aaron Peel we’re talking about. The man Carolyn specifically told us, on multiple occasions, not to interact with.”

“Like her advice has worked out so great for me so far.”

“Just because some of it was bad, it doesn’t mean you can dismiss all of it. And you know she’s right about Peel.”

“So he's a little creepy, I think I can handle that in the name of-”

Her phone chimes in her pocket. They both freeze. She slowly pulls it out and checks the notification.

“He said yes,” she relays, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. “Says he's free tomorrow.”

“ _Tomorrow_?” Bill’s eyebrows shoot up. “Eve, this is a _terrible_ idea.”

“Come on, it’s just one creepy rich guy.”

“Why is he saying yes? He knows you’re barely a full-fledged member, it’s hardly an even trade.”

“You know rich collector types, they’re obsessed. They’ll take anything they can get.”

“Eve, he’s clearly planning something else. He will lock you in his sex dungeon! You’ll be lucky if he only has a fetish.”

“And if I’m unlucky?”

“He’ll have multiple, and you’ll fulfil all of them."

She leans back, laughing. “Yeah, maybe he’s _really_ into middle-aged Asian women with bushy hair and questionable magical abilities.” She pauses. “Oh, shit, I can kind of see that, actually.”

“You’re still going, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

Bill sighs, very deeply. “Something terrible is going to happen to us, and then I will say I told you so, and it will not make up for it at all.”

“You’re coming with?”

“I can’t let you go in there alone. It’s too blatant a trap for my conscience to allow.”

“Okay then, Mr. Optimism.” She gets to her feet and brushes off her pyjama pants, then turns to Bill with a smirk. “Race you to the sex dungeon,” she quips, before making her way back inside the house.

“That won’t seem as funny when we’re stuck in an actual dungeon!”

(…)

They pick Bill up from his home, Peel’s sleek car taking the exit with surprising displeasure for an inanimate object. Aaron did agree to having Bill tag along on the library tour, but Eve didn’t manage to extend that to the lunch, which was awkward and solitary, at a completely empty restaurant.

Bill slides into the seat next to her, dressed up in a nice suit. It makes her feel a little better about her own fancy dress, which she is kind of glad he talked her into buying, or she would have looked even more out of place today.

“No Peel?” he asks once the car is back on the move.

“He went on ahead. Didn’t feel like a detour.”

“Charming,” Bill comments quietly. He throws a quick glance at the driver, who doesn’t even acknowledge his presence. “So, how was it?”

“Fun. He put me in handcuffs, but they were the sexy padded kind.”

“It’s good to know you’re taking the situation lightly.”

“Okay, fine, there was no funny business. We just sat there and talked. Or, he asked me questions and I answered.”

“Any…” He casts about for the right word, looking again at the chauffeur. “...interesting questions?”

Meaning, anything that could get her in trouble or possibly reveal Peel’s hidden agenda.

“Not really.” This seems to surprise Bill. “He wanted to know all these little things, like what’s my routine like, what are the requirements for full membership, some history stuff…”

“History stuff?”

“When Carolyn started the order. Whether I know any other groups.”

Bill’s face darkens by the second. “That’s…”

“Harmless?”

“Beyond harmless. He’s got an all-access pass and he doesn’t even try to go for the big ones?”

“I mean, what _are_ the big ones for a non-mage?”

“A very well-informed non-mage.”

“Having lots of books doesn’t make you well informed.”

Bill makes that face he gets when Eve deliberately misunderstands for avoidance purposes.

“Peel is clever. _Very_ clever. He’ll know this stuff.”

“Fine, what would you ask? If you were him.”

“If I were him, I wouldn’t bother with you, to be quite frank. You’re a Padawan. Carolyn has answers, _you_ barely have questions.”

She slumps back in her seat. She knows that Bill is right, that this is all a bit suspicious, but it’s too late to back out now, and she’s sure she wouldn’t even if she were given the choice. She’s too desperate for answers to inspect the offer too closely.

“Maybe I’m a way to Carolyn?”

Bill lowers his voice to a murmur before he suggests, “You think he’ll kidnap you and exchange you for information?”

“I mean, that’s illegal. Like, very much illegal. Carolyn could just call the cops.”

“He’s rich, he can avoid the law.”

“Then why not just kidnap Carolyn?”

The car slows down as it turns off of the motorway. Almost there.

“I’m just worried. He can’t possibly have been satisfied with what he got from you over lunch.”

“What if he’s trying to recruit me?”

“Recruit you?”

“Yeah, pull me over to the dark side. He has more money, more contacts, more resources. And he knows that I’m in it for the books, he’s seen me at all the auctions.”

“His very own witch,” Bill muses, hand on his chin.

“Not a very good one.” Or so Peel thinks, anyway. And he wouldn’t have been wrong, until Villanelle. “But the easiest to convince, probably. And if the work environment is good enough, maybe others will start to be tempted too.”

After all these years of mediocrity, Eve is right back to being poached. It’s a nice stroke to the ego, even if it’s coming from a possible fetishist. The jury is still out on that one.

“He didn’t even eat anything,” she confides in an even lower whisper. “He just sat there and looked at me.”

Bill nods, thoughtful. “So this is either corporate politics or the beginning of _Silence of the Lambs_.”

They slow to a crawl right as they reach a large gate, which opens automatically at their approximation. Inside lies a wide lane, lined on both sides by well-groomed and perfectly symmetric trees, which leads straight to a distinctly mansion-like building.

“Ready to find out which?” she asks Bill with some trepidation. She’s filled with a tension that could be fear as easily as it could be excitement.

Bill, on the other hand, seems to be leaning quite firmly towards dread.

“Can’t wait.”

(…)

A nondescript man in a nondescript black suit meets them at the door and immediately begins walking deep into the maze of rooms. They hurry to catch up, and Eve keeps track of about five abrupt turns before she admits that she has no idea where she is any more. Despite how big the place looks from outside, it somehow manages to seem even bigger once they’re in it.

They go up and down several flights of stairs, which makes it hard to track what floor they end up on, but Eve is almost certain that they’ve gone underground. The suspicion is somewhat strengthened by the distinct lack of windows.

“Well, we’ve got the dungeon part down,” she whispers to Bill, leaning closer to make sure their guide doesn’t overhear.

“The books are kept in a sealed, temperature-controlled vault, to ensure that they are optimally conserved,” the man pipes up in a monotone, nearly giving Eve a heart attack after his prolonged silence.

They eye his back for a few steps. He didn’t even turn to deliver the information.

“Do you think he’s a robot?” Eve asks, even quieter. She has no idea whether she’s been overheard, because there is no reaction or response from up ahead.

“No,” Bill replies dryly, “you’re just bad at whispering.”

“You’re terse when you’re nervous,” she comments a little louder, giving up on secrecy.

“I’m saving my brain power for more important things, like survival.”

“Did your _brain power_ keep track of how we got here?”

A pause. “No.”

“Same here.”

“We’re going to die.”

She laughs at the dramatics. “If we’re doomed, we’re doomed. In for a penny, in for a pound?”

“We’re already in shark-infested waters, why not find the nearest shark and shove our legs in its mouth?” Bill offers sarcastically.

They stop in front of a sealed door. A slight hiss escapes it as the pressurized interior equalizes with the rest of the house, then it swings open and their guide steps through.

The “vault” is less a vault and more a giant library, filled with two floors of bookshelves and several elegant desks, and pitted with doors into little reading nooks. Peeking around, Eve can see that they seem to contain specialized equipment, some kind of scanning machines, a few computers.

“If this is the dungeon, lock me up,” she breathes out. Bill throws her a look, clearly begging her to stop tempting fate.

“The collection is not restricted to magical tomes. Please refer to the archives for the particulars,” their guide says, sweeping a rigid arm to point at one of the computers. Then he does something that could either be a nod or a slight bow and retreats to the corridor. The door closes behind him with another little hiss.

“Do you think Peel will be my sugar daddy?” Eve asks, wagging her eyebrows.

“I think Peel isn’t here. Which doesn’t bode well for your theory of recruitment.”

“He might be, lurking in the shadows,” she says in her most ominous tones. “Like a _vampire_.”

“Peel being a vampire isn’t anywhere near the worst-case scenario.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out his phone, immediately frowning at the display. “There’s no signal down here.”

“Of course there isn’t, we’re in a pressurized, temperature-controlled bunker.”

“Eve, I understand that you use humour as a coping mechanism, but could you please tone it down?”

She looks around. Is the place bugged? She wouldn’t put it past Peel. Just in case, she steps closer to Bill.

“Look, relax. Whatever happens, I’ll get us out of here.”

“With what? The power of friendship and wishful thinking?” She quirks a brow, but he doesn’t lighten up. “I’m serious. What would you do, right now, if Peel locked us in here? How would you ‘get us out’?”

“Blast the door?”

“Do you know how to do that?”

“I can try.”

“And if you fail?”

Bill looks stern now, his concern beginning to grow infectious.

“I’ll try something else. Blow a hole in the wall, find the vents, overload his system-”

“Do you know how to do _any_ of that?” he asks, a little louder, and she doesn’t say anything. They both know the answer already. “Right. So can you please try to take this seriously?”

She deflates, excitement now decidedly squashed.

“Fine. Peel isn’t here. He could still come by later. Catch us when we’re done, and thoroughly dazzled by his vault.”

“He could,” Bill sighs out. He lays a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll have a look around, poke my head in all the doors. Go on and do your research.”

She nods and heads to the nearest computer, to have a look at what’s available. Bill walks off, quickly disappearing among the stacks, and it isn’t long before she forgets all about him because Peel’s collection is even more impressive than she expected.

She sees all the books he stole from under her at the auctions, but that is barely the tip of the iceberg. He must have feelers all around the world, snatching up everything of interest. There are books she’s seen, books she’s heard of, books she only ever dreamed up, and then a handful that are beyond her wildest hopes.

She _really_ hopes Peel is hiring, because screw Carolyn. She’ll come to work every day in a maid’s outfit if it gets her full access to this library.

But she’s here for a reason, so she collects herself and moves on to a more specific search. Anything on “She Who Carries the Sun”, or “The Enlightened One”, or even, after a moment’s hesitation, “Anna”. Cross-check with anything on “Villanelle” or “demon” or “binding”. She watches the list dwindle with each successive restriction, then pauses. Removes “binding”. Starts a separate search just for “demon” and “bind”. Is she getting side-tracked again? It’s hard to tell, when she isn’t sure what she’s looking for.

She prints out the two lists, which detail titles, particular chapters where the keywords pop up, and the books’ location in the labyrinthine stacks. Most are gathered in the same region, probably the magic section, so she relocates there, deeper in the library, and begins piling volumes on the nearest desk.

Bill finds her a couple of hours later, having walked the full perimeter of the library, checked every single nook and cranny and poked at every strange machine. Some of them he wasn’t able to shut back down, which Peel might not be happy about. All throughout, he saw nobody, heard nothing. Down there, it feels like they’re the last two people on Earth.

“So is this good news or bad news?” Eve asks absently, trying her best to skim through a volume of Anna’s political strategies in the management of her kingdom.

“Nothing seems to be out to kill us, or spy on us, or burrow into our brains.” She hums in acknowledgment. “And the door is unlocked.”

“It is?” she asks with some surprise.

“Yes. Just push the button and it slides open. It’s still the only way out, and we have no idea where we are or how to get out of the building, but it’s better than the alternative.” She hums again. “Have you found anything?”

“Interesting? So much. Useful? Not quite.”

“As long as you’re entertained,” Bill sighs out. He sits down across from her and loosens his tie, seeming to relax at least fractionally. “Can I help?”

She pushes a random book his way. He opens it, glances at the first page.

“I don’t even know what alphabet this is.”

“Oh?” She slides it back her way, takes a look. The funny little symbols that fill the pages blur back into English. “Right, you can’t- Uh, try to find an English one?”

Bill stares glumly at the giant messy piles all over the desk. He picks a book at random and carefully removes it from its stack. He squints at its contents. “Italian, I think.” Another pile, another random book, another squint. “Norwegian? Swedish? Something Scandinavian.”

This carries on for a while, until Bill’s weak momentum finally stops entirely.

“You’d think a multi-millionaire would have hired a translator so he could actually read his own books.”

“Maybe Peel speaks a million languages,” Eve offers with a shrug. “Maybe he just likes _having_ books, and not necessarily doing anything with them.”

“Well, it’s inconvenient.”

“The list is somewhere in here. It should have the English books.” She waves at the cluttered surface of the desk. Where did she leave those sheets anyway? Maybe under the 5 volumes of the _History of Nordic Mages_?

“I think I’ll leave you to it.” He gets to his feet and has a look around. “I’ll go… knock on some walls.”

“Oh, looking for secret rooms? Exciting stuff, keep me posted.”

“I’ll call out if I find the fetish cave.”

“Don’t hog the leather chaps!” she yells across the distance, and immediately feels the vague embarrassment of shouting about leather chaps in a library. Even a completely empty one.

She sits in absolute silence, hungrily devouring information for about an hour longer. Every single one of the books surrounding her is absolutely fascinating and she would do terrible things to get to take a few with her, but they are also not helping with her problem.

Probably because she isn’t sure how to formulate it. She wants to help Villanelle, which is hopelessly vague. Going into more detail, she figures she’d either unbind her or make her human.

If she’s going to lean on the binding angle, she needs to read about demons and binds in general, which is not at all easy, because everybody skirted around the topic, and all she can find are endless biographies of particular demons that skip over all the good bits.

On the other hand, to have any hope of making Villanelle human, she’d have to find the ritual Anna followed, which is unlikely, or otherwise pinpoint the journey that Oksana mentioned in her journal, the one where she found the ritual in the first place, and then try to cross-reference with Anna’s history and find some kind of timeline that could somehow hint at where the ritual was found or where she kept the instructions afterwards. And even spelling that out already makes Eve exhausted, let alone actually go through with it.

It’s a needle in a haystack, one she has exactly one afternoon to comb through, and she isn’t even sure whether there _is_ a needle there.

She’s just taken a break to mull over the thought that maybe she’ll never find any information on binding in books, and the knowledge now only resides in the minds of a handful of people, all of whom are either inaccessible or actively don’t want to tell her, when Bill returns in a rush.

“Wait, there’s actually a secret room?” she asks as soon as he slides into view, far too hurried to have come up empty.

“There’s definitely something. A door that was treated to blend in perfectly with the wall. Can’t have been by accident.”

She gets up and he turns on his heel immediately, rushing back towards the stacks. They weave through turn after turn, and Eve grows thoroughly impressed that he can actually find his way around the place.

“Did you check inside?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“I have no idea what it is?”

“It?”

He stops and she nearly runs into him. They’re in front of a perfectly smooth section of wall, except the panelling is the slightest bit thicker, if Eve really pays attention. Bill runs his hand from top to bottom, pauses halfway through and pushes. The panelling slides back and reveals a dark room which instantly lights up as Bill takes a step inside.

Inside is… _it_. Switched off, it’s a large black rectangle at around waist height. Switched on, as happens when Bill rests his fingers on it, it’s an interactive screen, with a set of options on the bottom left and another on the bottom right.

“It looks like google maps,” Eve comments, because it’s the first comparison that comes to mind. The icons on the left are somewhat familiar, especially when she cycles through them. Satellite view, map view, terrain view, then something that seems to pull up blueprints on all buildings in range. That has to break some privacy laws.

Bill walks up to her side and taps the screen itself. With one finger, he drags the map around. Adding another, he zooms in and out.

“It’s literally google maps,” Eve reiterates. “You broke into Peel’s secret google maps room.”

Bill grunts, because it’s obviously not google maps and they obviously need to figure out what is the difference.

“Okay, fine, then… Where was it pointing when you got here?” At the moment, it’s hovering somewhere in the North Sea.

“At the house. At this room, probably at itself. I’d guess it’s the default location.”

“That doesn’t give us anything.” She squeezes past Bill and turns her attention to the options on the right. “What do these do?”

“I’m not sure. They make the screen different colours. Maybe filters.”

She goes through every single option and watches as the North Sea goes purple, then dark grey, then yellow, then pink, and so on. Nothing else happens.

“Did they do anything else for you?”

“No, but I did see something else. Hang on.” He looks around the screen, searching for something, and finally taps a small bar that stretches to allow input. The search bar?

Instead of writing any location, he presses the “home” option that appears just below. They quickly fly back to England, then the Peel house, then the single room underground. There are two black dots, side by side.

“Is that… us?”

“Most likely. It was only one point, before.”

“How the hell does it know we’re here?”

“I’m not sure, but it isn’t marking out anybody else, unless the house has been completely abandoned.” Bill zooms out a bit, showing the entire house. No new points appear, only the two that mark them, slowly merging into one as the room grows smaller on the screen.

“That is _so_ creepy. Do you think he put trackers on us somehow?”

Bill goes quiet, mulling it over. Eve taps on the screen absently. She flips through the filters again, watching the world change colours.

“Wait,” Bill suddenly calls out. “Do that again.”

She presses the purple filter on and off. The map goes purple, then back to black and white.

“It wasn’t doing that.”

“Doing what?”

He zooms in again and the points separate. One of them is bright purple, a slightly lighter tint than its surroundings. The other remains a flat black.

“The colours. My dot was black.”

“So mine has colours?”

She flips through every single filter, over a dozen of them, and they all show the same: one point, brightly illuminated in the corresponding colour; one point, uniformly black.

She taps the last filter and the screen goes green. Bill’s marker changes colour to match hers.

“Okay, so I’m not a master of symbolism and metaphors. But, would you say that green is typically the colour associated with nature?”

“What are you saying?”

Instead of answering, she taps on the filter again, returning the points to black. She zooms in very close, until only Bill’s marker is visible. Then she picks a filter at random, and the map goes yellow.

“Do you see that?” She leans closer, squinting, and Bill follows her. She taps the filter on and off, on and off. “It does change, a little. See? Yellowish, kind of.”

“So the filter says I’m strongly green and weakly other colours, and you’re a bright shining star in all of them.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she breathes out without thinking, her mind entirely consumed by the discovery. This is so cool. This is _so cool_. “Bill, this is a magic detector. Like a demon’s sixth sense, you know, how Kenny can-”

“I know what you mean, yes.”

“This is impressive,” she snaps out by instinct, then freezes because oh no. “Oh no.”

“Peel can use magic,” Bill concludes for her, voice steely. No matter how advanced, nobody could make pure technology interact with magic. It would take power, even if just a drop of it, even if so weak that nobody had ever noticed it before. “This is bad, this is very bad.”

“That’s not even the main problem. Do you see what I look like in here?” She zooms out, bringing her own bright star of a marker into view. “I look very, very-”

“Powerful,” a voice sounds from before them. Bill turns on his heel, startled, but Eve follows him more slowly, well aware of who it is. “Yes, you’ve gone through quite a change lately, haven’t you, Eve?”

“Why aren’t you on the map?” she asks with impressive bravado. Everything inside of her is trembling, but somehow her voice holds steady.

“I made it, do you really think I wouldn’t know how to conceal myself?”

Peel stands behind them, leaning against a wall on the corner of the room. Eve is sure he wasn’t there before, must have slipped in through some secret passage. The house is probably crawling with them.

“Quite an elaborate trap,” Bill says, voice tight and almost angry. Eve can tell he’s scared, his posture screams it. Peel shrugs.

“I only planned to stop you from leaving the house. You were the ones who decided to go poking around and make the situation so… dramatic.”

“Still, it must be satisfying. To have a big showdown, right when we piece it together.” Eve isn’t sure what she’s trying to do. Whatever it takes to keep him talking, find an angle, a way out. Bill’s earlier warnings come back to her in full force. She has no idea what to do.

“I honestly don’t care,” Peel says simply. “I don’t care about either of you. I will let you go, as soon as you tell me everything you know about Villanelle.”

The name is shocking, coming from him. How much does he really know?

“You probably know more than me.” She tries to take a step back, which would press her against the magical map, if she were actually able to move. Peel smiles at her distress.

“I’m sure you can’t leave the house. But why make it easy for you?”

The walls around them open up, revealing elaborate and ominous-looking devices hidden away. A light shines on each of them, freezing them in place as mechanical contraptions snap around their wrists and ankles, lifting until they’re suspended in the air.

“What are you, a Bond villain?” Eve calls out in frustration. She tries to do something, anyway, but in the rush of nerves and adrenaline her mind is a bubbling cauldron that won’t settle on anything long enough to act. Magic courses through her veins uselessly.

Peel steps closer and his eyes are frighteningly cold under the harsh artificial lighting.

“Tell me about Villanelle. What did she do to you?”

She plays dumb.

“She talked to me.”

“Let me reiterate that I do not care about either of you.”

He tilts his head, an almost imperceptible gesture, and a ripple of pain flies down Eve’s side, lashing at her ribs. She takes in a hissing breath, feeling the sharp bite fade to a dull ache and the wet feel of blood trickling in a thin line down her stomach. She looks down to find that her shirt is untouched, although it’s beginning to darken with red.

For a moment, she is too shocked to react. Is Peel going to _torture_ her? It feels like a far-away fact that has made its leisurely way to her. Pain. Restraints. Nobody knows where they are. But people can’t just do something like that. Right? You can’t just trap someone in a completely isolated room in the basement of a completely isolated house and-

Oh God.

“What-” is all Bill manages, then Peel snaps his fingers and he collapses into a grunt of pain.

“ _You_ do not speak. You have nothing to tell me.” He steps closer to Eve. “Now. What did Villanelle do to you?”

She clenches her jaw. Her options are limited. She can guess what Peel is looking for, but he won’t like the answer she has to give him. Each breath she takes reminds her of the cut drawn across her ribs and the pain comes once more as a surprise, scattering her thoughts before they can get anywhere.

“I don’t know what you’re-”

Peel holds up a hand and she cringes against the punishment, but it never comes. Instead, he studies her a moment longer before turning to Bill. Eve watches as a cut appears across his forehead, tortuously slow and apparently entirely out of nowhere. Peel must be doing something, with lasers or- It doesn’t feel like just magic. He doesn’t feel strong enough to do something like that.

“I get the feeling you’re a stubborn one, Eve. It’s quite lucky, then, that you brought a _friend_.” With a sound like a whip, Bill’s sleeve rips open, the slashed fabric growing tinged with blood.

“No!” The sound rips out of her throat and pierces the air, slamming harmlessly against Peel. He chuckles.

This is real, and hopeless, and entirely in her hands. But what can she do?

“This is the last time I will ask nicely. What did Villanelle do?”

“It’s not what you think,” she calls out desperately. He’s already lifting his hand again. “Wait! It’s not! I’m telling the truth!”

Bill suddenly sags in his restraints, and her eyes flit wildly over his frame, looking for the injury, but she sees nothing and that’s even more frightening. What is Peel doing?

“You think she gave me power!”

This finally stops him, at least for the moment. She racks her brains for an answer, for a way out, but the truth she has to offer isn’t going to work. And no matter how hard she tries to work it out, she can’t spin things into a believable lie. She takes a shaky breath.

“You think she did something to me, fed my magic, and you want to know what so she can do it to you,” she finishes with a gasp. Adrenaline pumps through her until she can barely breathe against the drumming of her heart, until her fingers twitch in clenched fists and her jaw trembles between each word.

“Yes. Obviously,” Peel snaps back. He steps between them, towards the magic screen, and Eve turns her neck in a painful angle to keep him in her line of sight. Bill’s breathing has settled somewhat, and she sees him slowly straighten back up. He needs to be okay. He just needs to be okay.

Peel is doing something on the screen, typing command after command on a smaller window that has popped up, some sort of debug tool. The map zooms out, their two points vanishing, until all of Europe is visible. Another marker appears and the screen follows it automatically, slowly zooming in on its region. Somewhere in Romania.

“Villanelle,” Peel begins, folding his hands together behind his back and turning to walk away from them again, “is currently making her haphazard way across Europe and back. She’s clearly in quite a state which, honestly, does not interest me in the least.

“Except that,” he continues, making a small pause as if to put his thoughts in order, “when demons are in _a state_ , they can be quite unsafe to interact with. Particularly so when you are interested in something that benefits you quite a lot and them not at all.”

The image on the screen flies to accompany the sudden jump of the marker, up and a bit to the left.

“It’s delicate business,” Peel concludes, and turns back around. “Which is why I need you to tell me _exactly_ what you did and exactly what _she_ did, to end up with _this_.” He raises an arm and she flinches, turning to Bill instinctively, before she understands that Peel is only pointing her out.

He smirks, pulls his fingers into a fist. Bill gasps out a scream and Eve still can’t see what is being done to him, but now there is a thin trickle of blood dripping down the sleek metal claws that wrap around his ankles.

The screen shifts again. The motion registers in the corner of Eve’s vision, but she doesn’t turn, doesn’t care.

“Please, I’ll tell you everything I know, just let Bill go.”

“Why would I do that, when you are so much more compliant with him around?”

“He doesn’t know anything! He isn’t involved in any of this!”

“Which makes him perfectly disposable.”

Bill is screaming again, and the whole world begins to flicker as Eve feels her throat rip in its own scream, and the drum of her heart is so loud now that she swears her chest is heaving along with it, and everything is spinning, and the screen is spinning, spinning, faster, so fast-

Something explodes. She isn’t sure what, until she slams hard against the floor, her knees too weak to hold her up. She moves on auto-pilot, flies to the side just in time to cushion Bill’s body as it drops heavily from its restraints.

“Eve, what are you doing?” a new voice asks, and it’s Villanelle.

Villanelle found her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle is back at last! Are you curious to see what happens next? ^^ 
> 
> Feel free to come check me out on twitter @evesaxe, and see you next week!


	7. Don't take me home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve does something she didn't mean to do

Eve gasps air in and out of her lungs, not yet able to come up with anything to say, with anything to do, in response to Villanelle’s question. What _is_ she doing? Being reckless, getting her best friend in trouble, making mistakes she should know better than to do.

“Why did you come with this skinny man to his torture basement?” Villanelle carries on, detachedly curious. Surprisingly, the callousness works wonders at snapping Eve out of her thoughts.

She blinks and sits up, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Villanelle is a few metres away, crouching on top of something. The something lets out a wheezing cough, and Eve realizes that it’s Peel. She wonders how heavy a demon is. Probably as heavy as it wants to be.

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Villanelle gets to her feet, not even sparing a glance at the man underneath her. She walks to Eve, pulls her up with a hand that is mercifully solid, settles her other hand on her waist as soon as Eve is standing.

Before she can process any of what is happening, the world vanishes from under her feet, then returns in a flash, and she is at the top of a large staircase, by the entrance of a decaying mansion. She collapses to her feet again.

Villanelle is in front of her, watching from a respectful distance, and as she sweeps her head to one side and the other, Eve realizes they are alone.

“Where’s Bill?” Her voice is strangely rough, like she’s been breathing in smoke. It’s confusing, until she remembers all the screaming.

“Which one is Bill?”

“My friend!” Villanelle is so calm, and now it isn’t so much snapping Eve out of it as driving her wild because _how is she so calm_? “The one who was being tortured! Oh, God, he’s-”

“Oh, I left him. He’s probably going to die, anyway.”

“What?!” She looks up at Villanelle with blurry eyes and realizes she’s crying. He can’t die, he can’t, this is all her fault, they have to get him out of there, to safety, to a doctor. “Please, do something. You can save him.”

“Why?” It isn’t cruel. Just perfectly neutral. Like she’s genuinely wondering. “He’s only slowing you down.”

“Oksana, please,” she chokes out, the lump in her throat growing until she can barely breathe. Not Bill, not Bill, _not Bill._

“You care about him,” Villanelle says, or maybe she asks, it’s hard to tell, it’s so strange and quiet. Eve nods, again and again, desperately. _Please_. “You love him?” Now it sounds more like a question, now she sounds more like a person.

And Eve does. She does love him. He’s Bill. She needs him to live, desperately. She nods again.

Villanelle watches her, face an unreadable mask. Then she vanishes.

Seconds go by. Eve tries to count them, instead of just waiting and going crazy. At one minute she begins to wonder: did Villanelle go back for Bill or did she just leave? Leave her here, wherever _here_ is, alone, to wait and wonder. Did Eve say the wrong thing?

Two minutes, three minutes, the feeling in Eve’s body is slowly returning and she can feel how scratchy her throat has grown. The tears are still streaking down her faces but now she lifts her hands to brush them off.

Villanelle appears. Alone. There are long streaks of blood on the front of the fancy shirt she’s wearing, drawing patterns across her hands. It all fades away as Eve watches her.

“I left him with your friends in London, they will take him to the doctor. He will live, I think.”

“Thank you,” she mumbles, lips numb with relief. “Thank you.”

Villanelle stands there. She stares at Eve, unmoving. Eve slowly wipes away the last of her tears, struggles to her feet, stands opposite her in the middle of the wide hall.

“What?” she finally asks. Her voice is less rough now, more watery.

Villanelle tilts her head to the side. “You called me Oksana.”

“I did?”

“You did.” She seems excited, but a very subdued kind of excited. Like whatever is inside can’t quite pierce through the barrier that has grown with time and now binds her, inescapable. “I knew you would understand.”

“It was because of you. Of what you did for me.”

“You are more like yourself now. You shine beautifully.” Villanelle’s smile is dazzling, but it fades as she presses her lips with confusion. “I still don’t have the words.”

“Kenny told me,” Eve offers. “About the sixth sense. About seeing my magic.”

The slight pressure in her brain returns. Villanelle is in there, again.

“Kenny is a demon. He is with your friends. Yes, I saw him at the house.”

Eve smiles softly at her proud conclusion. “You know, you could just ask.”

“You don’t like when I probe.” Again, it’s not quite a question, not quite a statement.

Eve’s first instinct is to say she doesn’t mind. But truthfully, she does, a little. She doesn’t want Villanelle to find out something she isn’t ready to share. It might be best to establish that boundary right away.

“Maybe it would be nice if you could avoid it. When it isn’t necessary.”

Villanelle nods, then falls quiet again. Eve is hit by a wave of exhaustion and stumbles to lean against the wall, suddenly in dire need of something to hold her weight for her. Giving up with a sigh, she slides down to sit against the peeling wallpaper. Villanelle follows suit and sits in front of her, so close that Eve could just reach out and brush their fingers together.

“Why didn’t you come find me again?” Villanelle asks quietly, voice holding a hint of hurt. “Why waste your time with that strange man?”

“Find you? But I was trying to help, with what you showed me.”

“Help?” The concept seems foreign to Villanelle.

“You showed me how Anna took your humanity. I was trying to find a way to return it. Peel has a ton of books and I, uh, I underestimated him, I guess,” she finishes weakly, her breath already coming a little sharper as she recalls what happened.

Villanelle’s fingers tap against her knees, jittery, like she’s resisting the urge to reach out.

“I did not show you that for help. You can’t help, I think. I just wanted you to know, about me.”

“Oh.” The thought sends a strange flutter through Eve, breathes some of the fatigue from her limbs. “Why?”

Villanelle shrugs. She taps her fingers again, then presses her palms against her thighs.

“My head is full of Anna, all the time. Whenever I try to sit, to rest, it pulls at me again. I have been trying, like you asked. To not hurt people. But the buzzing in my head gets so loud and when they touch me, it _startles_ me, I need it to stop.” She freezes, shivers, shuts her eyes tightly then opens them again. Like the sensation returns at the mere mention of it. “With you, it stops. Gets quieter. The touch doesn’t feel… When you are there, I want to stay.”

“You want me around?”

Villanelle nods, eyes fixed on her fingers. They tremble, still pressed tight against her legs, then break free and tap rapidly against her knee. Eve’s hand shoots out to still them, feels the tension that settles over Villanelle’s frame at the contact, and for just a second she is scared. Then it passes and Villanelle is relaxed again, as relaxed as she ever is.

“You have a…” Villanelle doesn’t finish the sentence, only reaches out with her finger, slowly enough not to dislodge Eve’s touch. The tip of her finger brushes against the fabric of Eve’s shirt, still stained a deep crimson.

“Oh.”

“Is it Bill?”

She smiles. Villanelle knows it isn’t. She’s asking to be polite, to request the knowledge she isn’t supposed to have otherwise.

“It’s me. Peel cut me through the shirt, somehow. It’s good, because I’d like to wear it again. But, uh, that’s a lot of blood. I’m not sure it’ll make it.”

“It is dry now,” Villanelle agrees with a nod. “It will be harder to get out.”

“Can you do it? Or does it only work with illusion clothes?”

Villanelle’s shirt shimmers playfully in response, cycling through a few colours before returning to the original silver.

“You will bleed on it again.”

“Well, can you…” Eve pauses, her tongue suddenly thick and clumsy. Villanelle’s eyes shift up to hers, then down to the stain.

She tugs at the fabric, untucking it, and very gently peels it away from the wound, where it has clung to the drying blood. Eve feels cool air hit her stomach, but does nothing to stop Villanelle or suggest an alternative. Her frayed nerves grow electrified as she feels the demon’s palm settle against her stomach, her fingers reach up higher, along her ribs, brushing against the cut so lightly that it barely stings.

All of Villanelle is solid, human, Eve realizes now. Is she doing it for her benefit? Did she notice Eve’s discomfort at her foggy shapelessness? Or is it her own whim? Does she want to be solid to receive Eve’s touch?

It feels impossibly slow, the gradual warming of Villanelle’s fingertips and the skin under them, the tingling as torn flesh mends. Eve’s breathing is coming faster now, in gasps she tries to contain, but she’s afraid to move and jerk Villanelle’s hand in the wrong direction.

After what feels like at least an hour, Villanelle pulls back. Eve looks down to see that her shirt is now impeccable, sucks in a breath and feels no stinging to her side.

“Thank you.”

Villanelle smiles tightly. She cradles her hands together.

“Do you wish he was here?”

“Who?” Eve asks, utterly confused. She feels like she forgot, just for an instant, that other people existed in this world.

“Bill.”

“Bill?”

“You love him,” Villanelle provides. Oh.

“He’s my best friend,” Eve quickly corrects. “Did you think- Is that why you saved him?”

“I saved him because he mattered to you.”

“He does. He really does. He’s my best friend.”

Villanelle smiles again, and it looks more genuine. It makes the fluttering in Eve’s chest get worse. She really needs to get her expectations in check. Villanelle is… Well, even if she is possibly interested in Eve, she is most definitely also hopelessly in love with her Anna. Hurtling to self-destruction for her, actually. It’s not a recipe for success.

Eve lets her head drop back against the wall and suddenly the exhaustion that has been washing in and out of her settles heavily on her bones. She wants to slide back and go to sleep right there. She has no more adrenaline left to keep her afloat.

“You are tired,” Villanelle remarks. Eve hums, the best she can give in response. She feels a flutter of movement, like Villanelle is debating approaching. “I will take you home.”

She opens her eyes, with a desperate effort. Villanelle freezes halfway through swooping in to grab her, whisk her away.

“If I stay, will you stay?”

Villanelle gazes down at her, lips parted. She says nothing, standing impossibly still, then slowly nods. Eve lets her eyes close again.

“Then don’t take me home.”

“Alright,” Villanelle replies solemnly. She shifts away, and after a moment just long enough for the darkness to begin creeping into Eve’s mind, the comforting warmth of another body presses against her, shoulder to hip, sitting right next to her. She’s going to wake up with a sore neck again.

“I won’t take you home.”

(…)

“What was she like?”

They’re in the Swiss house, the one at the top of an inaccessible mountain. It might be the only reason they still haven’t been invaded by Carolyn and her crew, or stalked by Konstantin. Eve can imagine Peel would be able to swoop in on a helicopter, but she suspects he’s a little afraid of facing the both of them, even with all the magic gadgets in the world.

Or maybe he’s just afraid of Villanelle. Whatever. Still works for Eve.

The mansion wasn’t like that when Villanelle left this world. It was older. Apparently, some other mage and their bound demon found the place, spruced it up, kept it around a bit longer. It was worth their trouble, Eve thinks, just to see the adorable look of frustration on Villanelle’s face whenever they turn a corner to find a corridor that wasn’t there before, or that one that was expected has vanished.

It’s quiet and empty and honestly a little cold, but Eve spends the whole morning just breathing in the light mountain air, feeling like all the weight of the world has been lifted off her shoulders for a moment.

Villanelle doesn’t want her help. Doesn’t expect it, anyway. Bill will be fine. Carolyn is far away. Eve doesn’t have to fix anything.

She knows it’s a short-lived relief, that their situation is entirely precarious, but she clings to the moment. It’s just her and Villanelle and nothing is expected of her except to enjoy herself and her company and maybe figure out a few new spells.

There is a sad little snow-covered tree outside, and Villanelle has decided to sit on the most fragile of its branches, just because she can. Eve watches from below, trying to dispel the constant fear that it will crack off and send Villanelle hurtling down.

“Anna?”

Eve only remembers then that she asked a question.

“Yeah. What was she like?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“She was everything. She was Anna. She put the stars in the sky for me.” She tilts backwards on her branch and stares off towards the sky, except it’s daytime and her view is covered by every leaf still clinging to the poor tree. Maybe demons can always see the stars, who knows? “You have my journal, you must know.”

“I tried not to read too much. More than necessary.”

“Why?” Villanelle asks, as genuinely curious as always.

“Privacy?”

“Oksana is gone. She doesn’t need privacy.”

“ _You’re_ Oksana.”

“Not really. I am Villanelle. Oksana is dead and so is Anna. It shouldn’t matter whether you read the one’s thoughts about the other.”

“Do you think of her differently now?”

She shrugs against the branch. It shifts a little and Eve’s heart picks up, just for a moment. It doesn’t break, of course.

“I feel confusing things. Anna lied to me, I know. To make me a demon. She was afraid that I wouldn’t do it if I knew. I am not sure how I would have felt, if I had found out before.”

“Why did you bind yourself to her?”

The aftermath, Eve understands. A bind, on someone who was already deeply in love, must have made it beyond difficult to resist the feeling, no matter how harsh the betrayal. But before that, right as she was turned, she had the choice to leave, to get revenge.

A long silence. There are no birds up there, only the wind beating against the leaves of the sad little tree.

“I think… this is a moment for privacy.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Asking is good. You are curious. That is how you learn."

A giddy feeling bubbles up inside Eve.

“Can you teach me?”

Villanelle shifts and suddenly she’s down by her side, her movements so smooth that there’s barely any transition.

“What do you wish to learn?”

“I don’t know. Magic.”

Villanelle snorts. “Alright, Eve. I will teach you _magic_.” She says in her most sarcastic tones. “If you are a good student, we might be able to fit in all of the magic by lunch. Then you can practice in the afternoon.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll be more specific,” she huffs out, not actually bothered. She mulls over her options. She just has so much she wants to know, more than she thinks she could learn in a lifetime. “What am I good at? I mean, what kind of magic am I more attuned to?”

Villanelle looks her over. Eve pictures the little filters on Peel’s machine, flicking over the scene. Pink and blue and grey and orange.

“Mind.”

“Mind?”

“Yes, you are a very tricky woman. You could… sell ice to an Eskimo,” she enunciates slowly, scrunching her nose playfully at Eve as she pronounces the nonsensical phrase.

“Oh, I thought of a funny one for you the other day. I can’t remember what it was now.” Eve tries her best to remember, scours her memory, but it feels like it’s been a million years since she summoned the demon and everything since has been buried in the avalanche of life-changing events that is her new normal. A funny phrase that popped into her head once isn’t up there in the list of things to remember.

“You thought of me?”

“I think about you all the time.”

Eve didn’t mean to say that. She really didn’t. She was going to be cool and not fawn over the demon who is magically incapable of forgetting her ex. But Villanelle is _right there_ , and she looks so gentle and vulnerable and surprised at the possibility that she has ever been in Eve’s thoughts.

Well, she’s literally been in Eve’s thoughts. Poked around in there, too. But also in the metaphorical sense.

“I think about you too.”

“Yeah?”

Villanelle smiles, but doesn’t elaborate. But Eve really wants to know.

“What do you think about me?”

Villanelle steps closer, and her smile is a smirk now. “Find out for yourself. It will be good practice, for your mind magic.”

“But I’m already good at mind magic,” she replies, like she isn’t itching to get her answers.

“Complacency is the first step to mediocrity.”

“You sound like a self-help book.”

“I have never read a self-help book, so I do not know.”

“Well, now you don’t have to, because that is exactly what they’re like.”

“Eve,” Villanelle says, amusement edging around the word. “Do you want to know what I think of you or not?”

“I mean, I can probably guess,” she replies instead of giving in. What is she doing? She has no idea. It feels like flirting. It feels like they’re both flirting. Bill would be so proud. Everyone else would be so disappointed.

“You can guess?” Villanelle seems sceptical. She crosses her arms. “Guess, then. If you are correct, I will let you choose another lesson.”

“And if I’m wrong?”

She taps her lips thoughtfully. “Then I get to ask the same question. And find out for myself.”

Eve isn’t very happy with that trade-off, but she also doesn’t want to admit it because she would be admitting to a lot more in the process. To all the things she’s thought of Villanelle that she doesn’t want her to know quite yet.

_Ever_ , she reminds herself sternly. This is not leading anywhere. It can’t.

“You’re on,” she says, with confidence that fades as soon as the two words leave her.

She has no idea what Villanelle thinks about her. Obviously, or she wouldn’t have asked. She could guess something generic, but she has a feeling there’s a specific correct answer to this. Then there’s the fact that Villanelle is a demon. Their minds don’t exactly work the human way. What if what she _really_ thinks of Eve is something really cryptic and incomprehensible to the human mind? Maybe she sees her in eight dimensions and thinks her projection into the plane of _whatever_ is very aesthetically pleasing.

Eve tries to clear her mind, run through her options. Villanelle stands a few steps away, her smug smile only tempting Eve to give in and go get her answers. Just walk up, reach for her thoughts. It should be right at the surface, anyway, a skim would do it, Villanelle must be thinking of it right now.

Her fingers twitch by her side. What is Villanelle thinking? She narrows her eyes, gathers all her concentration upon this essential question.

Villanelle’s smile grows just as Eve’s consciousness becomes strangely untethered, tendrils stretching to cover the distance between them. _Oh_. She’s pretty sure it isn’t supposed to work at this distance, yet here she is, slipping around the edges of Villanelle’s mind, like waves breaking against cliffs.

Villanelle is well aware of what’s happening, and she brings up her walls with practiced ease, smirking at Eve’s poking and prodding, at the laps she takes in search of a way in. It’s not quite a challenge, more like an older, taller kid holding another’s toy just out of reach and laughing every time she jumps to snatch it back. Smug.

Eve isn’t sure what happens next.

She weaves and turns and at the hundredth failed attempt to glide she just… slams against Villanelle’s mind. She crashes through the barrier, straight inside, and plunges. Just dives in, completely out of control, going faster and faster, everything zipping by her, twisting her out of orbit, leaving her absolutely stranded.

In the utter overload to her senses, she is only vaguely aware of Villanelle’s slipping smile, of her stumbling heavily to the side, gripping her head with a groan.

She stumbles into Villanelle, past her, inside of her, and the million worlds orbiting her collapse into one.

_A dark room, its floor covered almost entirely with a huge and complex pattern of symbols, a candle flickering on each wall. She is on her knees, breathing heavily, and everything about her body and mind feels off, sluggish._

_A strange dissonance drapes across her thoughts. She should be happy, she has done what Anna wanted, the exhilarating rush of magic flowing past her is proof enough that it worked. But the ritual ended, the bright lights faded back to harmless black ink on the ground, and the magic is still flooding her limbs, the pressure almost uncomfortable._

_She brings up a hand to brush back her hair, rub at her eyes._

_And then she knows, because she isn’t stupid, because she is the cleverest of all of Anna’s apprentices, and the quickest to catch on, make the connections. Her fingers are jet black, perfectly uniform, like the ink stains that spotted them grew, stretched, filled every inch of available space._

_All of her is shadow and magic and chaos and she observes with horror that, with every second, it settles more easily against her bones, until it feels entirely like herself._

_She is a demon._

_Anna watches her. She senses Anna, sees the bright glow of her magic lighting her from within, her beautiful Anna. She looks up, catches her gaze, and maybe she’s crying but she can’t tell. Her body feels like a suit, viscous and slippery and not quite there._

She won’t want me now.

_The thought strikes through the confusion, clears it all, clears everything but that single statement. Her entire world shrinks down to those five words._

She won’t want me now.

_Inky black fingers clench into fists, disappear into formless pools of darkness. Everything is darkness. Too many sensations crowd against her, too many senses to process, magic and cold and the smell of burning and ink, and they all wrap around the fear digging at her chest._

She won’t-

_“Oksana,” Anna’s voice cuts through the spiral. She looks up, sees a smile. She clings to it, desperately. Anna is smiling. “Will you join me now? Will you bind yourself to me?”_

A howl pierces through the scene, pierces through the flood of thoughts and memories striking Eve, pierces through the air.

Eve is standing in the cold morning air. Her lungs heave in greedy breaths, like it’s been ages since her body last received oxygen. She is so dizzy, and through the haze emerges a pounding headache. She straightens herself, trying her best to return to reality. What has she done?

There is a strange rumbling, a dry snap by her feet, and she watches absently as a crack slithers along the ground, flies ever faster, and with a groaning crunch strikes the sad solitary tree, pulls it apart, bark splitting, leaves rustling, branches shattering.

Villanelle looks split apart too. She is hunched forward, her body curling in on itself, fingers digging in her hair and pressing at her eyes, like she’s trying to physically pull herself together.

“Villanelle,” Eve says, instinctively keeping her voice low. The demon shivers at the sound of her voice, but doesn’t turns, doesn’t respond. She steps closer.

“Villanelle, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have- I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I am so-”

Her hand, reaching closer and closer, lands lightly on Villanelle’s shoulder, causing her whole body to go rigid and taut with barely restrained energy.

“Don’t touch me!”

She pulls her hand back, but it’s too late. The very air around Villanelle seems to condense into something solid and wavering and slams heavily against Eve as it rushes outward in all directions, sends her flying backwards and landing clumsily on her side.

“Oksana, I-”

“Oksana is dead!” Villanelle screams, her voice too loud, bursting against Eve’s ears. She turns to face Eve, eyes bloodshot and dark, and her body flickers, the pretty dress and the elegant face and the delicate hands and the long blonde hair, it all flickers, in and out, and the black seeps through the cracks.

With a sound like rolling thunder, she’s gone.

(…)

Eve sits outside for an hour, hoping that Villanelle will return, let her help somehow. Explain, apologize.

She doesn’t return.

She spends the rest of the day wandering the house aimlessly, trying her best not to get lost among endless rooms. The place is still enchanted, restored from its degraded state by Villanelle’s magic. The rooms are fully furnished, the kitchen is stocked, even the books in the library are perfectly preserved.

That’s where she stays, as soon as she finds it, just in case she loses track of it if she wanders off again. It’s not quite Peel’s vault, but it’s still enough to help Eve work away the hours of waiting.

More than just work them away. Bill was right. She needs to know what to do with her magic, to protect herself and the people she cares about, to make sure nobody hurts them, to make sure _she_ doesn’t hurt them. She keeps doing that, lately.

It’s hard to find the right books. Actual straight-up manuals were rare back in the days of magic. Most times, spells were sprinkled in between histories, biographies, moral lessons, or recorded within the pages of someone’s magical journal. There’s no conveniently-organized collection of basics, of the rules for mentalization of spells, for clearing of the mind, for staying tethered. So Eve skips between volumes, commits spells to memory, but most of all seeks ways to instinctively handle magic.

Mages who were particularly powerful didn’t have to restrict themselves to formal spells. They could learn to manipulate magic itself, sense the ways in which things were connected and, therefore, could be disconnected, or reconnected, at will. They could slip into someone’s mind just by feeling it out. No spell. No technique.

A very dangerous power to have, if you can’t control it.

It’s not a task to manage in an afternoon. God, Eve wishes it were that easy. How did Villanelle put it? Let’s fit in all of the magic by lunch. Well, lunch has come and gone, but maybe she can aim for dinner.

The sun sets. Eve begins to wonder whether Villanelle is ever coming back. All emotional investment aside, she _is_ stuck in an inaccessible mountain somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Teleporting is pretty much the only way out, unless she’s suddenly become a survival expert.

She probably won’t die alone up there. No, if nothing else, Peel will swing by once Villanelle has been gone long enough, carry on with the torture thing. Maybe Eve should devote some time to coming up with a nice believable tale for him. _Yes, Villanelle just stuck her finger in my forehead and transferred over a few gigabytes of magic, if you’re nice to her she’ll probably do the same for you. No, really._

Maybe she can mind-blast him too. Poke at his brain until she triggers some childhood trauma, sneak out while he cries about it. Of course, that will only work if he _has_ childhood trauma. Eve isn’t even sure he had a childhood. He seems like he emerged fully formed from a cloning pod.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts by a muffled shuffling near the door. It’s too quiet to be Peel and his creepy murder gadgets, and Eve looks up hopefully. Villanelle stands there, looking human again. She doesn’t come any closer.

“Are you okay?” Eve asks, not moving either. They watch each other from across the library, one standing by the entrance, the other leaning on the stacks near the back.

“Yes.” She doesn’t elaborate. She keeps looking at Eve, brow furrowed. “Did I scare you?”

Eve chews on her lip, pondering the question. She nods.

“I am sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I shouldn’t have let you. I forgot that...” Villanelle looks down at her hands. It’s hard to tell in the darkening room, but they seem to flicker. For just a second, they flash jet black. “Demon minds are tricky. Not meant for humans.”

She smirks, tries for humour. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a question of ‘letting’, was it? I snuck right past your defences.”

Villanelle returns the teasing with a crooked grin. “You had no idea what you were doing, did you?” she asks playfully.

That one sinks Eve’s mood instantly. All the guilt comes flooding back, after the brief moment of respite. “No, I didn’t,” she sighs out, pulling up her knees to hug against her chest.

Villanelle steps cautiously around the books Eve has left scattered all over the floor, making her slow way over. She leans down, hovering above her for a moment, before settling by her side.

“Sometimes we do things we didn’t mean to do,” she says, very quietly. She’s looking at her hands again, picking at her fingertips. Eve remembers the passages she read in Oksana’s journal. About the things she did, the things Anna taught her not to do.

“It happened to Oksana too, didn’t it?”

“When your magic is very powerful, and you do not know how to use it, it can… come out. When you are angry, or upset. Before Anna found me, I did it all the time. I would break things, and sometimes hurt people. It made them scared of me.”

Eve never thought of that. It makes sense, in a way. If a witch with enough potential can use magic with nothing but intention guiding it, then why wouldn’t it come out before? Before all her training, before she even knows she has that power. Just by instinct. In moments of emotional turmoil, when you throw every inch of yourself into your rage or despair...

Then every inch of you comes out. And when you really, really want something, Eve realizes in a flash of inspiration, and you find some hidden ability inside yourself, that can give you that something…

“I think I did that too,” she whispers. Villanelle turns to her with interest.

“Yeah? With your mind magic?” she asks, instantly understanding. Eve nods. It feels like a huge jagged block in her life coming to slide into place. “What did you do?”

“Manipulated people. I was just really good at finding weak points, you know? Messing with them. Getting what I wanted.”

It’s better than breaking things. She might have lost people, on that superficial level of splitting apart, of ending a friendship, but she can imagine how much worse her life would have been with a different set of uncontrollable powers. If she walked around smashing windows with her mind whenever she had a bad day.

“That doesn’t sound very nice.”

Eve isn’t sure whether Villanelle means her actions or her experience of it. Probably both.

“No. But I got a really nice job out of it, so...”

Villanelle laughs. It reverberates against Eve, relaxing her despite her best efforts at self-pity. She bumps her shoulder into Villanelle’s, stubbornly biting down her smile, which becomes harder as the demon lets out an affronted gasp and slumps over dramatically.

She reaches out her hand to pull Villanelle back up and then just… lingers. For a beat, then two. And then Villanelle twines their fingers together, settles their enjoined hands on her knee. Eve tries to catch her eye, but she is just looking down at their hands, her face filled with childlike concentration.

Eve hesitates, for just one moment, then lets her head drop to Villanelle’s shoulder. She takes in a long breath and basks in the quiet. Everything feels so calm. She wishes it could last forever.

“Villanelle?” she asks quietly. There is a question at the tip of her tongue, but she is afraid of asking it, of acknowledging the truth. So instead of ‘how long do we have’, what she asks is, “What do you think about me?”

A quiet huff of amusement.

“This again.”

“I’m just curious.”

“You are always curious.”

“I have an insatiable mind.”

Another huff, then a long silence. Villanelle’s thumb slowly starts moving, brushing gently against the back of her hand. Eve feels a motionless kind of shiver, a sensation she can’t quite pinpoint. Like she’s a helium balloon, beached against the roof of herself. Like little stars have made their way inside her veins and flit up and down her length. Like she has found the source of all magic, and it is at the point where Villanelle’s skin meets hers, little sparks of it flying up to fill the world.

“I think...” Villanelle begins slowly. She pauses, and Eve wonders if she began the sentence before deciding what she’d say after. She wouldn’t put it past her.

She waits patiently, focuses on the rhythmic motion of Villanelle’s thumb. Back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome setting the slow pace of her breathing. The sparks are little points of light, like fireflies. They flutter up, fight off the darkness. They are every colour, and no colour. They are iridescent.

“I think we are the same.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Count all the references to show dialogue in this one eheh
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feel free to check me out on twitter @evesaxe ^^


	8. Everything happens for a reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve is complicit in kidnapping

They spend the second day together, from morning to late night. Villanelle is curious about Eve’s past, an entirely blank slate against the meticulously journaled history of Oksana, that Eve has been fully privy to.

“I didn’t read it,” she points out.

“But you could have,” Villanelle says simply, like that settles the subject.

Not to mention that Oksana accounts for only the first sliver of Villanelle’s existence. Or that she herself claimed that “Oksana is dead”. When she wants to be right, she wants to be right.

So Eve tells her all the gory details. The failed relationships, the stellar career, the very late start in her path as a mage.

“Three years ago?!”

“Not all of us were found at twelve years old.”

“Ten.” Villanelle shakes her head, as if in deep disappointment. “You really didn’t read the journal.”

Eve didn’t realize how young she’d been. The thought of nine- or eight-year-old Oksana flying into a magically-enhanced rage is a little jarring, but she tries not to dwell on it.

Villanelle teaches her some magic, or at least tries to. Her teaching style is entirely subjective, based in intuition and feel, and that, coupled with Eve’s limited magical vocabulary, leads to a uniquely frustrating experience, especially when the demon gives up on awkward analogies and simply peppers her sentences with strange words in some unknown tongue.

“Wait, is this the same...” Eve does her best to reproduce the sound Villanelle has just made. Judging by the demon’s snort she isn’t successful. “… as the one I was supposed to focus on when we were shaping the fire?”

Villanelle seems affronted. “No, of course not! How can you get two completely different words mixed up? That was the… stuff in the air, that you have to wobble. You know,” she concludes encouragingly, like her explanation made perfect sense. “And this is more about the bumps in the space of the mind that feel… off.”

“Off how?”

Villanelle shrugs, confused by the question. “Just off. Some things are red, or small, or round. These are off.”

“Off is not an objective property!”

“Neither is small,” Villanelle points out, quietly smug in the face of Eve’s frustration.

“Okay, forget it, just write it down and I’ll use my translate-o-vision.”

Villanelle smirks but doesn’t say anything, only slips out a sheet of paper and writes a collection of illegible symbols in the very middle of it. Eve casts the translation spell and watches the symbols shift to the Latin alphabet, becoming…

“Glasztrmo?” she pronounces very slowly. That can’t be right. Villanelle laughs.

“Now you know how to pronounce it,” she says with cheerfulness that reads much more like mockery. “Well, you don’t. You really butchered it. But it was a good first effort.” She laughs again in the face of Eve’s continued confusion. “It’s a translation spell, not a knowledge spell. It cannot translate a concept you don’t know. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Eve repeats sarcastically. Villanelle nods, approving but still marginally teasing. “You could have just told me, instead of being an ass about it.”

“But I like being an ass.”

Villanelle bears a dazzling smile, ear to ear, just so proud of herself. Eve wants to be pissed at her, to glare until she at least stops being so openly amused, but there are so few times when Villanelle is like this, no trace of longing or melancholy to leave their bitter taste.

“Obviously,” Eve mutters, looking away to hide how little she’s bothered, but there’s a hand on her cheek, keeping her in place, and as quickly as she realizes it, she is being kissed. It’s light and fleeting and it stops her breath in her throat, like a single sigh could disrupt it.

When Villanelle pulls away, she is still wearing the exact same smug grin, like she knows just how Eve’s lips tingle in her wake, how her breath comes as an afterthought, only once her lungs begin to desperately protest at the lack of oxygen.

“Really?” Eve asks, trying her best at a deadpan but probably landing not quite there. “That’s the moment you choose to kiss me?”

Villanelle shrugs, lifts an unbothered brow. “You’re cute when you are annoyed. Why, did you envision it happening differently?”

“I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” Eve bluffs smoothly, deciding to match Villanelle’s casual posture.

“Maybe some lit candles? A nice gift of jewellery?” Villanelle carries on, like she didn’t even hear her.

“Well, nothing matches the sheer romance of mockery.”

The amusement on Villanelle’s face slips a little. “I was not mocking you,” she immediately assures. She looks a little solemn as she adds, “The best way to learn is to do it yourself. That includes the mistakes.”

She pauses as she seems to ponder the situation. Then she raises her palm as if asking Eve to wait and promptly disappears. One beat, two beats and she’s back, hair slightly ruffled and a small bouquet in hand.

“Flowers. That is romantic.” She’s half playful and half tentative, studying the flowers as soon as she’s stretched out her arm to offer them, her gaze curiously detached.

Eve doesn’t reach for them. It’s like Villanelle’s short absence was enough to burst the bubble. They both know the truth of the situation, they just let themselves get carried away in the moment. Still watching the bouquet, then watching Eve watch the bouquet, Villanelle’s brows twitch, furrowing for a fraction of a section. Her eyes screw shut and one of her hands leaves the flowers to press against her temple.

Eve reaches out in an abortive gesture that never makes it across the distance. The flowers stand between them, a multi-coloured reminder of all the other, less tangible obstacles.

Villanelle is Anna’s. It’s not a choice that she can undo, maybe ever. Is it one she regrets? Eve can’t be sure, and she suspects neither can Villanelle. She watches Villanelle’s grip on the bouquet grow tighter as she fights the pull, the paper crinkling in protest, and the colours slowly drain from the flowers, Black roses, black peonies, black lilies. Still blooming, still fresh, still beautiful, but wrong.

Off.

(…)

On the third day, Eve wakes up, has breakfast, roams the halls that have become only slightly easier to navigate with time. If Villanelle is around, she doesn’t come her way. Somehow, Eve can tell she isn’t.

Bu late morning, Eve sees her through the windows, sitting near the wreck she made of their lonely tree. She’s holding something that glitters under the thin sunlight. Eve comes out to join her.

“Go anywhere nice?”

Villanelle shrugs. Her hair is loose and hides away her face as she looks down at the sparkling item in her hands. It’s half hidden from view, but Eve can see that it’s a small metallic circle on a chain, its detailed face speckled with rusty red. The same dark colour is smudged across Villanelle’s fingers, a thin streak of it on the back of her hand.

Eve knows what it is, but she doesn’t want to say it.

“Do you want to wash up? That can’t be too...comfortable,” she finishes awkwardly. Just looking at it, she can almost taste the ferrous tang in the back of her throat, invading her nostrils. The sticky texture of it, when it dries. She realizes she probably feels more uncomfortable about it than Villanelle, who by now must be used to a little…

She swallows dryly.

Villanelle’s grip tightens around the trinket, then she sweeps it away, shoves it deep in a pocket. She turns to Eve, _lunges_ at her, comes so close that Eve can map every detail of her face, her hand swings up to cup Eve’s cheek gently. And Eve feels it stick a little against her face, and she can’t keep pretending it isn’t _blood_ , but that is when Villanelle kisses her again.

It’s nothing like the previous time, it’s rushed, it’s urgent. Villanelle’s lips press against Eve’s with building pressure, her teeth dig into Eve’s lower lip, not enough to hurt, but enough to draw out a gasp, a way in, for her tongue to push through and brush against Eve’s. The hand against her cheek slips backwards, to cup her jaw then dig into her hair and tug, just a little. Just enough to sting, and distract Eve from the fact that _there is blood in her hair_ , but there is also Villanelle, right there, everywhere, kissing her like her life depends on it and it’s-

It’s not right, is it? It’s desperation that moves her, and not the right kind of desperation. When Eve pulls away, hands pressed to Villanelle’s shoulders to keep her from following, she sees the way Villanelle’s face is lined with anguish, she feels her hands cling to her shirt with tight fists.

“It’s getting stronger, isn’t it?”

Villanelle nods, eyes still closed. When she opens them, they show something like remorse, and it digs at Eve.

“It’s not enough anymore. I thought if I pulled you closer, then she wouldn’t- Doesn’t matter, it didn’t work anyway.”

She slowly sinks backwards, returns her hand to the pocket where she left the necklace to return to its inspection.

“How much longer?” Eve asks quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“And where is it-”

“I don’t know,” Villanelle repeats more forcefully, cutting off her question. She doesn’t sound angry so much as frustrated at her own lack of answers. Scared, of what’s going to happen next, of the unknown.

“There has to be a reason.”

Villanelle chuckles. “That is one of our favourite lies to tell ourselves, isn’t it? ‘Everything happens for a reason.’”

“No, listen to me. Your bind couldn’t have been some glitch, some twist of fate. Anna was the most powerful witch there ever was, it can’t be a coincidence that her bond to her demon didn’t break when she died.”

“She did it to me.” The possibility sounds so soulless as Villanelle poses it. Like it would come as no surprise, change nothing. She twirls the pendant around in her fingers. “So I’d never be free?”

“She wouldn’t do it just to be cruel.” Eve is thinking now, the cogs in her head are turning, and Villanelle’s endless fidgeting, those flecks of red against the metal, become an exponentiated distraction. “She had to have an endgame.”

“She is dead,” Villanelle points out, the evident flaw in Eve’s reasoning. Yes, obviously she’s dead. Obviously that is somewhat of an impediment to achieving most endgames. But maybe it’s a question of legacy? Of a lasting memory, an eternal-

The pendant glints in the sun and Eve looks at it, really looks at it. She realizes why Villanelle held on to it.

“Where did you find that?”

If Villanelle is surprised by the question, she doesn’t show it. She only studies the thing absently, like she’s forgotten everything about it except for its current existence.

“There was a man. He wore it around his neck. I wanted it.”

“It’s Anna’s,” Eve supplies the explanation, and Villanelle nods. Her pendant. The crest, meant for demons, but designed for a single human, one powerful enough to feel she deserved it. The crest that Eve has seen hung around someone else’s neck

Did Villanelle kill Konstantin? It washes over Eve again, the waves stronger every time. Villanelle kills people. The man that Eve saw, talked to, Carolyn’s old fling, killed at the hands of the demon Eve has just kissed. She thinks of the blood on Villanelle’s hands, smeared around her neck as she pulled her close, clinging to her hair, sticking there.

“What did the man look like?”

“Thin. Bald.” Eve feels her entire body deflate, although she knows it isn’t entirely justified. A stranger is still a person. He could be someone else’s Konstantin. Someone else’s Bill. But he’s a stranger to her, an anonymous face she’s never gazed into, and somehow that makes it easier to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Annoying.”

But if it’s somebody else, and he had Anna’s pendant too… Then how many of them are there?

“He was wearing it? The pendant?”

“It drew me to him.”

“Did anyone wear something like that in your time? Aside from Anna herself.”

Villanelle shakes her head. “It would be like putting yourself at her level. Very rude,” she adds with widened eyes.

“Right. But maybe, after she died… It would be a way to remember her. Carry on her legacy.”

“Maybe.” Villanelle doesn’t seem very convinced, or maybe just not very interested. “I wasn’t there for that part.”

Eve chews on her bottom lip absently, her full focus on the thoughts she is trying to run down. Villanelle’s unbroken bind, surely not an accident. Anna’s pendant, the same as Konstantin and the dead man now wear. Wore, in the case of the latter. Speculation, Bill would claim, but Eve is pretty sure even he would agree things are getting suspiciously connected.

“If Anna did have an endgame, I think I know who might have an idea about it.” She turns to Villanelle, the thrill of action filling her, now that she has a plan. “And I’m going to need your help getting to him.”

(…)

They bump into Carolyn on her way home from her botanical society’s weekly dinner. She weaves through a street market, paying curiously close attention to a stand of bumbags that almost makes Eve forget everything about the mission as she pictures her wearing them. They stride in casually from a side road, sliding in behind Carolyn, and Villanelle has already blocked her magic by the time she turns around.

“Eve,” Carolyn says quite blandly. “Fancy meeting you here. Have you had a look at the straw hats? Absolutely splendid colouring.”

Villanelle sends Eve a look that is easy enough to interpret, but she gives only a shrug in response. It’s Carolyn. There isn’t much explanation she can provide.

“How's Bill?” is the first thing she asks, the question pressing on her from the moment her eyes landed on Carolyn.

“He’ll pull through. I did warn you, you know, not to engage Peel.” The temporary relief is washed away by familiar frustration, Carolyn’s even tone activating some sort of Pavlovian rebellion response.

“Yeah, well, you’ve been wrong before, and I can’t just blindly follow authority, can I?”

“That you can’t,” Carolyn concedes dryly.

“I am going to kidnap you now,” Villanelle cuts into the conversation, offering the fact with casual flair. Those two are quite the deadpan duo.

“So you two are working together,” Carolyn comments, instead of reacting to the news with the appropriate amount of fear. Even just trepidation, just a little of it, just so she could pretend to have the instincts of a normal person. “I had hoped to avoid this, but I see I overestimated your good sense.”

Eve gives up on the chit-chat. She reaches out her hand, all business. “Keys.”

Carolyn complies, handing them over like Eve just asked for a couple quid to go buy an ice cream. “May I ask what you will be using them for?”

“No,” Eve cuts in bluntly, “you may not.” She pretends she doesn’t see how Villanelle’s mouth hangs open, like she was about to provide the answer herself, then snaps shut after a slight hesitation.

She puts away the keys, runs over the steps of the spell in her head, and gives Villanelle a decisive nod. In a blink, both women vanish and she is left alone. She hurries along to Carolyn’s house.

She has a very vague plan to handle Kenny, involving some initial attempts at subterfuge and, if all else fails, knocking him out with something heavy and praying for the best. Luckily for her – and for him, she supposes –, he doesn’t seem to acknowledge her presence as she walks in, never pausing whatever it is he does in his greenhouse all day, headphones cupped around his ears.

She goes upstairs, checks the office phone for the latest calls and finds what she’s looking for without much searching. A little voice-altering spell and she dials the number.

“Konstantin. Come by the office. There’s been a development.” She shuts off the call before he can respond, as she assumes Carolyn would do. Then she leans back and waits.

For a really long time. Maybe she should have kept the call going just long enough to make sure Konstantin was actually free. But a new development is bound to catch his interest, right? He’ll cancel his plans, he’ll be there.

Downstairs, the front door opens and closes, startling Eve. She didn’t think he’d have a key. She quickly calms herself down, takes a few deep breaths and casts the second illusion of the night: with a flash, she turns to the mirror and sees only Carolyn. Perfect.

A knock on the office door and she begins focusing her magic on the man about to enter. He steps in just in time for the spell to take hold, lowering his mental barriers. The woman in front of him might not stand quite like Carolyn, or talk quite like her, but those are trivial details that he shouldn’t pay close attention to, anyway. He should focus instead on her questions, and on answering them appropriately.

With a covert wave of her hand, Eve casts the last spell she practiced with Villanelle, and an invisible wall slides over the door, making sure nobody can enter or exit without her permission. She settles back in her seat.

“Konstantin.” She gives the slightest nod towards a chair and he crosses the room to settle on it heavily. Externally, she watches him impassively. Internally, she is thanking all her stars that they aren’t actually having a fling and she wasn’t forced to make out with his old beardy face.

“Carolyn, what is this about?”

“She’s getting closer,” she tries. It’s better to go for cryptic until she’s sure of what Carolyn does and doesn’t know. And, well, it’s true that Villanelle is getting closer. Either to some secret plot by Anna’s followers or to the destruction of her psyche.

Konstantin leans back in his chair, brow furrowed.

“So you know about Anton,” he finally says. Interesting. Even these two are keeping secrets from each other. It should make Eve’s job easier, at least. For now, it seems pretty clear that Anton was the dead guy, so she goes with her gut.

“She took the pendant.”

“Of course she did.” Shit. Eve pretends to brush something away from her desk so Konstantin doesn’t catch her hesitation. “Don’t worry, he wasn’t one of the Twelve.”

The Twelve? So there _is_ something going on. They know exactly what they’re doing, and Eve is going to figure it out too, no matter what it takes.

“So the plan can still go on?”

She risks a glance at Konstantin. He is watching her with a hint of a smile.

“You are all for the plan now, are you?”

“Things have changed,” she risks in a stroke of inspiration.

“Yes, and it’s all because of you. And your little apprentice.”

The urge to let this conversation slide to Eve’s side of things is almost overpowering. What does Carolyn really think of her, and what has been her plan for her since the start? She could just let something slip, see how much the woman has shared with Konstantin. But the priority is Villanelle.

“Never mind throwing blame. There’ll be time for that later,” she adds in a brusque tone, suggesting quite strongly that he’d better not. Konstantin’s smile widens. He really is a little insufferable. What does Carolyn even see in him?

Then again, Carolyn is insufferable too.

“You are concerned,” he says smugly. “All the time you were with us, you were concerned. You’d rather let Villanelle rot in her own realm for all of eternity, even though you knew what you would be sacrificing.”

They wanted her back. Maybe not on Eve’s terms, probably restrained and controlled, but they need her for something.

“Sometimes, a sacrifice is necessary.”

It sounds like something Carolyn would say, especially if she was against the whole plan, but the comment seems to make Konstantin angry. He reaches for his chest, grabs at something under the cloth of his tunic. Eve imagines the outline of the crest, cradled in his palm.

“You are afraid of power. You would rather live in a world of shadows, if it makes you the brightest light. A small fish in an even smaller pond.”

Eve clenches her jaw but doesn’t respond. She imagines this is what Carolyn would do. Oh, but it is beyond cathartic to see her being criticized this way, all the words that Eve has wanted more and more to throw in her face but never had the chance. The great Carolyn Martens, accomplished witch, exposed for what she is. Limited. A coward.

“Well, Villanelle is here,” Konstantin carries on. He calms down a bit, mulling over a thought. “It is not ideal. We don’t have the powerful mages we should have, to handle her properly. She was summoned by the least trained of all your students, a wild woman who did not even restrain her.”

“You’ve made your point, I believe, about my student,” she reminds him. They really need to get on track. They keep going over how they have a plan and how it all started, but what Eve really needs is the next step. Where is Villanelle going? How is she going to bring power? They’ve been planning this for a long time, most likely, and she doubts it’s a harmless little tea party.

“Your student is the reason this couldn’t happen without bloodshed,” Konstantin states calmly, his eyes darting a cold ice at her all the while. She has to side with Carolyn on this one; if they didn’t want bloodshed then they shouldn’t bring Villanelle back at all. Clearly it isn’t big on their list of concerns. “But it doesn’t matter. She’s getting closer. Even if her little… vacation has delayed our plans.”

Oh, that’s Eve again, isn’t it?

“It won’t last much longer.”

“It can’t,” Konstantin agrees with a shake of his head. “You know where Anton was killed.”

No, she really doesn’t. But Carolyn would, because she has Kenny and his demon sixth sense, and so Eve is forced to nod along and hope that Konstantin is in the mood to repeat the obvious.

“It is the closest she’s gotten. It will catch up to her.”

No, of course he isn’t. Closest to what? What do they want, what are they going to do with Villanelle? She digs her fingers into her palms, frustration building up inside of her and threatening to spill out. But it can’t. She’s on a mission, she needs answers. She can’t go back to Villanelle with nothing but more question.

“It is a bit ironic, isn’t it?” Konstantin begins, cutting a silence that Eve didn’t realize had settled as she struggled to keep herself in check. “That you have tried so hard to get away from Anna and Villanelle, only to end up with your own Oksana?”

She flinches. Her own Oksana? Is that what…

Konstantin must misunderstand the reaction, because he carries on, ruthless. If they were old flames, they must have parted on bad terms, because Eve can see all the bile threatening to spill out of him now.

“I told you, again and again. You cannot snuff out power. You cannot bury it under misdirection and abuse.”

She already knew this much, Eve tells herself, but it’s so different to hear it from Konstantin, directed at Carolyn herself. That she took everything from her. Her power, her confidence, her sense of self. Konstantin leans forward, finger pointing accusingly, revelling in piling it all on Carolyn. Words he’s held back for years, maybe, until it all came tumbling down around her.

“Anna knew what to do with power. How to shape it, defuse it.”

“Clearly she didn’t,” Eve cuts in before she can stop herself. She isn’t sure whom she hates more at this moment. They’re all the same, aren’t they? Liars, manipulators. They use you, like a tool, like a pawn in their own designs.

Konstantin’s eyes widen, the corners of his lips tilt with anger. Eve can see a flush rise up his neck, strangely contrasting with the serene image of a friendly Santa.

“Anna was given the greatest challenge of her life and she turned it to her greatest advantage! But you, you are weak and scared. When you found Eve, a remnant of the olden days, of the power that used to live on this Earth, of all the magic that was once accessible to us, you took her and you hid her and you suffocated her. She could have been our greatest asset and you turned her against us with your poison!”

She wants to, _needs_ to know more. She knows she shouldn’t, but she rises to the challenge.

“Anna had Oksana’s entire life to make her docile and she still failed. How would you suggest I manage Eve, a grown woman? With no safety net, no demon binding to fall back on. Power responds to power.”

“People respond to kindness,” Konstantin bites back. The words spear Eve, push her bodily against the back of her chair. How _dare_ he say something like that? After what his dear Anna did to Oksana, the way she treated her? He speaks of kindness like it’s anything more than another tactic for him, for all of them.

“Oksana did not.” It’s a lie, it’s a lie, Oksana _never_ had kindness, not real kindness. Not from Anna.

“She chose to bind herself to Anna. Would your Eve do that for you?”

_She won’t want me now._ The words return to Eve’s mind, burn against every inch of the space available. All that Oksana had room for, when it happened. When the woman who was supposed to care about her betrayed her, left her with nothing but her magic, to be shackled to her. The anger, the despair, fly around her in turn, each repeating those same words.

_She won’t want me now_.

Konstantin’s eyes go wide, now not from anger. He shrinks back by instinct, reaches again for his pendant. He is looking straight at Eve and she realizes what must have happened.

“You!” he calls out, more scared than angry. Her illusion has slipped. He has seen her.

She gets up from the chair, makes her way around Carolyn’s desk. He has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. So big, they all think they’re so big, but now he’s small. Shrinking under her gaze.

“Anna wasn’t _kind_ ,” she bites out, leaning over him.

“What do you want?” he asks, voice raspy and low. He raises his arm and she pins it easily to his side, freezes his body until all he can do is blink desperately against the magic restraints.

“I want the truth.”

Her hands push against his temples, fingers digging in his hair to connect with him, to slowly slip Eve’s consciousness down to burrow inside. His throat lets out a muffled cry.

Everything is sluggish in his mind, so little like Villanelle’s whirlwind. She can stroll easily along its length, avoid the gently orbiting memories and thoughts. He has no control over them, not even any paltry protections. He’s weak.

It’s the real reason people are cruel. Because they’re weak, and that makes them scared. And when they’re scared, anything feels justified.

She watches everything around her. It would be so easy to ruin him, to sever the right connections, to destroy the key parts of him and leave a shell behind. That’s scary too, but in a way that makes her cautious. Her rough actions grow slower, gentler. She finds the thought she wants and pushes inside.

It’s not like a memory, polished and linear. It’s fragments and sensations, in the way that the present works _. It’s a structure he’s visited a thousand times before, grand and hollow. Nobody knows of it, except the followers of Anna. Her last resting place. Her tomb._

_There, the Twelve await. They used to be stronger, but they are still the most powerful mages that the modern world can provide. They have trained, practised for years, to be able to perform the ritual. Twelve mages, to surround the demon and bring her to her higher calling._

_When the pull of the bind is strong enough, Villanelle will be powerless to resist. Weak. She will submit willingly to the ritual, to her fate._

_To bring Anna back. Her greatest legacy. Villanelle’s magic consumed, to feed the flesh of The One Who Carries the Sun. To bring back an era of magical enlightenment and prosperity. A small price to pay. A danger, removed from the world permanently, and a blessing coming in its place._

_The Enlightened One will rise again._

Eve slumps backwards, tumbles to floor with the force of the discovery. Konstantin grimaces against the sensation, but his face bears more triumph than fear.

“You’re going to kill her!” she cries out hoarsely. She hears her voice as if from far away, echoing against her ears.

“Not her. _It_ is a demon. There is nothing to kill,” Konstantin says ruthlessly. He seems almost pleased at Eve’s discovery. They’re monsters, all of them.

“She was human! She was a person, with a life, before Anna got to her!”

He shakes his head. No hint of remorse.

“It is for the best. You do not understand the danger that Oksana posed, even as a human. Anna struggled with the decision-”

“Oh, I’m sure it was so hard for her to make it!” Eve cuts in. She’s yelling in his face, yelling at the coolness in his words. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to kill someone because you’re threatened. To decide she’s too dangerous to live, just because you can’t bend her to your will. “To choose to rob her of her humanity, bind her forever, consume every last inch of Oksana for her own profit.”

“You cannot stop it,” Konstantin replies bluntly. He doesn’t argue her points, doesn’t even try. “Even if you tell Villanelle, she cannot help being pulled to her fate. To Anna.”

“I’ll find a way around it. I’ll keep her from going.” Eve will protect her, even if she’s the only one in the world who wants her alive.

“Oh really? And where is she now?”

“With-”

Eve’s phone rings, interrupting her. It’s Carolyn. She stares at the screen, watches the device ring in her hand, until Konstantin nods towards it with an expectant face. She takes the call.

“Hello, Eve,” Carolyn says, as cool as ever. “I expect your evening has gone better than mine.”

Konstantin huffs out a soundless laugh at Carolyn’s unbothered tone. He gets up, ignoring Eve, and reaches for the drink cabinet, pulling out a bottle of whiskey.

“I would have called sooner, but I appear to be somewhere in the French countryside, and it took a fair bit of walking to find a signal.”

Konstantin pours himself a glass and takes a swig, savouring the taste for a long time before he swallows. Eve just keeps silent, watching him, watching the screen of her phone where Carolyn’s name flashes her, laughing at her.

“If I may offer some advice, Eve?” Carolyn continues, not very concerned at the lack of response. “The next time you concoct such a plan, give the unstable demon a job a bit more engaging than, well, waiting.”

“Where is she?” she finally manages to ask.

“I’ve no idea,” Carolyn says simply. “But I suspect she isn’t coming back.”

Villanelle is gone. It’s all up to Eve, now. And she has no idea what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked the chapter! I can imagine a few reasons why you might eheh
> 
> Thanks for reading and feel free to come check me out on twitter @evesaxe


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